Malayalam Movies & Music of 2022
A retrospective from the MSI Team
The first full post pandemic year in Malayalam movies was a mixed bag in more sense than one.
First and foremost the positives:
The past several years saw an increasing amount of movies struggling for distributors. However, with the advent of streaming services and producers and distributors being more open to OTT releases, we have seen a plethora of movies reaching the audiences through more channels than the traditional movie houses.
Independent movie makers have always been the charm of small industries like Malayalam movies. This has grown quite a lot by more artists being able to showcase their skills and craft to the people worldwide
The number of movies released were close to 300 and the number of songs were around 1000, while stating the obvious that quantity is no criteria for quality, increased drastically from the pandemic years.
MSI does not list the non-movie albums in a comprehensive manner due to the fact that there are no authoritative sources to get this information from. So the data indicating albums and album songs are incomplete above. However, the trend continues to show that there is hardly any market for full length non movie private albums anymore. This has been on a decline for many years and the trend currently is for releasing single tracks independently on YouTube.
Sad to say that the concept of movie reviews is struggling these days due to the plethora of citizen journalists (paid or unpaid) who provide positive reviews for almost every movie. It is highly disturbing that one can no longer watch a movie based on some reviews you read, instead has to make up one’s own mind by struggling through, at times to watch them
Now to the data.
While close to 300 movies & 1000 songs were released through various channels, the quality of enjoyable and memorable movies were disproportionately low.
Here’s the criteria used for ranking the movies the way we did.
Is the movie successful in conveying a message, that is, if it has a message in the first place?
Is the storytelling engaging? Do the characters make sense?
Does it try to glorify some ill conceived notions?
Are there too many personality enhancing traits exhibited based on a lead actor’s pedigree or history?
Based on that, here are the top movies that are worth your time.
ന്നാ താൻ കേസ് കൊട് (രതീഷ് ബാലകൃഷ്ണൻ പൊതുവാൾ)
മുകുന്ദൻ ഉണ്ണി അസ്സോസിയേറ്റ്സ് (അഭിനവ് സുന്ദർ നായക്)
പട (കെ എം കമൽ)
ഭൂതകാലം(രാഹുൽ സദാശിവൻ)
ആവാസ വ്യൂഹം (കൃഷൻദ് )
ഒരുത്തീ (വി കെ പ്രകാശ്)
അപ്പൻ ( കെ ബി മജു)
അറിയിപ്പ് (മഹേഷ് നാരായണന്‍)
പത്മ (അനൂപ് മേനോൻ )
ലളിതം സുന്ദരം ( മധു വാരിയർ)
19 (1) (a)(വി എസ് ഇന്ദു )
Since the buck stops with the directors when it comes to malayalam movies, it's truly heartening to see someone like Ratheesh Balakrishnan Poduval establishing himself as one of the top movie makers of malayalam and see the several talented newcomes like Abhinav Sundar Naik, KM Mala, Rahul Sadasivan, KB Maju, Madhu Warrier and VS Indu. With time we can be confident that these movie makers will create some amazing products for us in the years to come.
As mentioned earlier, none of these movies are perfect and may not even stand the test of time with respect to being a seminal movie if you take the history of malayalam movies. However, all these movies, with its flaws and imperfections, tell you an interesting story and perspective in various genres that could be worth your time for both enjoyment and intellectual curiosity.
When it comes to the songs, one can see that the trends of the songs have changed a lot with respect to the influence of fantastic genres like rap. While these rap songs may not hold up against the accepted norms of rap, these are still encouraging signs for malayalam music. We do not believe that malayalam music should be solely on the amazing melodies and raga based approaches taken by G Devarajan, Johnson and other stalwarts over the years. As the world is changing and becoming smaller, we have taken the current sense of appreciation and what is attractive for all age groups and people from all backgrounds. At the same time, there is now a renewed appreciation for songs that sound nostalgic (read that as songs from the 80s). Golden voices of that era such as Unni Menon and KS Chithra still at their peaks do help recreate those feelings fairly easily.
With this in mind, here’s the list of songs we thought will be worth your time. It is to be noted that we did not include songs from Hridayam, Karnan Napolean Bhagat Singh and RRR, basically any movies for which the songs were released in 2021 even though the movies themselves got released in 2022.
Here is our list of notable songs in no particular order that you might want to listen this year
കണ്ണ് കറുകറെ കരിമേഘക്കൂമ്പു കരിങ്കടൽക്കര മണ്ണ് (വിശുദ്ധ മെജോ)
ചിത്രശലഭമായ് (വിചിത്രം)
എൻ രാമഴയിൽ ഇതൾ നനയും പനിമലരേ (കിംഗ് ഫിഷ്)
മയിൽ‌പീലി ഇളകുന്നു (പത്തൊൻപതാം നൂറ്റാണ്ട്)
മെല്ലെ തൊടണു നറുമണം (ലളിതം സുന്ദരം)
നിറ രാവിൽ (നോ വെ ഔട്ട്)
താരുഴിയും തരള മിഴിതൻ (നെയ്യാറ്റിൻകര ഗോപന്റെ ആറാട്ട്)
മഞ്ഞിൻ തൂവൽ (അവിയൽ)
മണ്ണും നിറഞ്ഞേ (മലയൻകുഞ്ഞ്)
കൺകളിലുയിർ (ഋ)
തു പാത്തു (തല്ലുമാല)
കണ്ണിൽ കണ്ണിൽ (സീതാരാമം)
കരളോ വെറുതെ (ഓ മേരി ലൈല)
തീരങ്ങൾ തേടുന്ന യാത്ര (കർമ്മസാഗരം വിശുദ്ധ ചാവറയച്ചൻ)
നാൾ ഹരിതം കാണാദൂരം (സുന്ദരി ഗാർഡൻസ്)
ഏലമലക്കാടിനുള്ളിൽ (പത്താം വളവ്)
പാതി പാതി പറയാതെ (നൈറ്റ് ഡ്രൈവ് )
വിജനമാം താഴ്‌വാരം (ട്വന്റി വണ്‍ ഗ്രാംസ്‌)
കണ്ണാടി കായലിനോരം (ഒരുത്തീ )
കനൽക്കാറ്റിൽ (പത്മ)
ആകാശം പോലെ അകലെ (ഭീഷ്മപർവ്വം )
ആടലോടകം (ന്നാ താൻ കേസ് കൊട് )
ആനന്ദമോ... (സോളമന്റെ തേനീച്ചകൾ)
ശിലകൾക്കുള്ളിൽ (കുമാരി )
Listen to all these songs on YouTube below
Misguided attempts at movie making
As in every year, this year also had several movies with purportedly good messages but fell flat with respect to its execution.
ജയ ജയ ജയ ജയ ഹേ - Great theme, but what on earth was the concluding message?. Poor treatment of the plotline not just goes into this unnecessary glorification of physicality in an attempt to show the power. End of day, did the antagonist learn anything? Darshana’s another great attempt goes to waste
ജനഗണമന - Goodness gracious, can we please stop screaming?
റോഷാക്ക് - Not a bad movie, but the excessive marketing and poor screenplay made it impossible to keep this effort exciting. Excellent visuals and the backdrop, spoiled by confusing overtures into fantasy and mediocre dialogs and script.
കൂമൻ - A movie plot with immense possibilities in being one-of-a-kind psychological thriller, messed up and portrayed as a 3rd rate crime movie with a 80s style villain. Poor casting, terrible directing and non sensical editing creates a hodgepodge of a movie that Jeethu Joseph should be ashamed of.
As always, there is probably one movie per week that missed the mark, but the reason for choosing the ones above was due to the marketing efforts that was used to position these as once in a lifetime efforts.
Overhyped terrible experiences at the movies
ഹൃദയം Taken in isolation this won’t be classified as the worst movie ever in 2022. But the amount of hype that surrounded how this movie should be interpreted and enjoyed gave everyone a terrible bout of migraine. Terrible direction (Vineeth Sreenivasan) and even poorer editing (Ranjan Abraham) took whatever feel good nature of the acting that was brought to the table to Darshana, Pranav and Kalyani. I have no idea what this movie was trying to convey. What was the whole point?
സി ബി ഐ 5 ദ ബ്രെയിൻ - It’s about time that the makers of this movie and the real funders behind the scenes stop milking this franchise. The world has moved on and so has the technical ideas and levels of appreciation of movies. Just because the evergreen hero, Mammootty, looks great does not mean that one should have to endure senseless crime thrillers.
മലയൻകുഞ്ഞ് - This was one of the most boring movie experience of the year. There is no doubt that Fahad Fazil is probably a top actor, not just in Malayalam but across the Indian moviedom. But, this was a forgettable movie and a role that suffered from serious lack of purpose.
We are not even attempting to write anything about movies like Aaraattu, Makal etc. as the themes, cast and crew of these movies are not tailored for moviegoers with any brain left.
There are several more, perhaps another 20 or so that had similar kinds of hype and the experiences fell flat. We realize that it is the right of the movie makers and the fans associations to keep hyping terrible experiences. But as Malayali audiences start going back to some sort of realism in their appreciation these attempts will be dealt with in manners that will make it impossible to continue.
Popular Artists
Jakes Bejoy, BK Harinarayanan, KS Harishankar and Sithara Krishnakumar have been the most popular artists in the songs department. Justin Varghese and Joe Paul were the breakout stars in the songs department for the year.
When it comes to roles as protagonists, Indrans continues to be the most popular. Instead of just the quantity, he is now able to make most of his roles worth remembering, at least for a short while. The sheer number of movies he seems to be acting in is a revelation and this is expected to continue in 2023 with the amount of his movies pending release.
However, for roles to remember, there is one actor that trumps above the rest. Kunchacko Boban, in his second coming, continues to be the best of the lot when it comes to roles worth remembering. Anoop Menon too did a bit of it himself, but he seems to be getting typecast in similar forgettable roles.
Here are some of the other notable behind the scenes artists in the malayalam moviedom in 2022. Click on their pictures to learn more about them.
Click below for the popular artists in each of the fields within the malayalam movie and music.
This year also we lost a lot of talented artists. Before we conclude, please spare a moment for everyone who is no longer with us (Click on the image below)
In conclusion, a year to forget rather than to remember. Here’s to hoping that 2023 will provide better memories of good movies with lesser hype and better songs.
