Oru Vadakkan Selfi is very old wine in a wonderfully crafted bottle. The bottle is aesthetically designed, cleansed, lined with gold and polished to look like new.
The storyline revolves around a good-for-nothing Umesh, the son of a small time grocer who is hellbent of being lazy to make a mess of his education and life. His sidekick Shaji, is someone who has pretty much given up on education and is mostly living his day-to-day life to have some fun more than anything else.
The storyline gets complicated when a girl at Umesh's neigbhoring house , Daisy, goes missing and some unfortunate series of events place Umesh with her the night of her disappearance. Lest you get all worked up over the disappearence or the veil of suspense, there enters a slew of characters including the movie maker himself taking us through a wonderful ride through the remote villages of Tamilnadu in the guise of chasing a character who passed away more than an year back in the story. The movie tries to warn the younger generation of the very pitfalls of internet and cellphones (An oft repeated theme these days in Malayalam Movies), however by using the social media as the tool to pique and sustain the interests of the generation.
Vineeth Sreenivasan and his friends including his Director Prajith deserves kudos for creating a light hearted movie that is so pleasant to watch. Cliches are used in abundance, but with the deliberate attempt to marry the old world and the new.
Nivin Pauly, as he always does these days excels in this tailor-made role for him and so does Aju Varghese. New face Manjima Mohan doesn't have much of an opportunity to demonstrate her histrionics, but looks quite comfortable and confident in the role given to her. Porutham Sreelakshmi is marvellous as Umesh's mom who is floating in the naivete of the modern world. The ensemble support cast also does a solid job. The music department of Shaan, Vineeth and Co, yet again has scored a home run, this time with Vaikkam Vijayalakshmi joining the fray for the out of the world rendition of Kaikkottum Kandittilla.