It appears Malayalam cinema is going through a mid-life crisis! What else can be said of the films released in the last few weeks with heroes in their fifties? Bharya Swamtham Suhruthu is the latest addition to the list. The film, directed by Venu Nagavally stars Jagathy Sreekumar and Urvashi.

Kariyachan (Jagathy) runs a private bank. He is a self-made man, who has made his fortune working in the Middle East. He runs his business with single-minded devotion. His only regret is that his wife Molly (Urvashi) is not paying him any attention and their marital life is almost defunct. Molly is a typical housewife. She cannot see beyond household chores and her daughter.

To save his marriage, Kariyachan takes his philanderer friend Girija Vallabhan's (Mukesh) advice. The textile merchant himself is married to an orphan Sreelakshmi (Padmapriya [Images]). The couple are childless.

Vallabhan teaches Kariyachan to regain his youthfulness by going for a physical makeover. He also teaches him how to attract the opposite sex by using private chat rooms on the Internet and how to have fun with them in the real world.

You may need guts of steel to digest what ensues next. Kariyachan finds a friend in Urmila (Jyothirmayee). Like in the many other films, there is degrading of the Internet and cell phones in this film too. Mukesh says 'chatting is cheating' at least three times in the film.

We have seen Mukesh in similar roles, of late. But our heart aches for Jagathy, whom we have seen perform the worst form of buffoonery in the past but nothing compared to this. The pretended seriousness in the second half of this film makes our heart bleed for the great actor.

Thilakan as the man who has lost everything due to his wayward lifestyle plays a good counsellor. Urvashi plays the stoic lady peppering her act with humour at first to almost seething silence in the end. For a change, she too looks her role. Padmapriya is pleasant and superficial while Jyothirmayee has nothing exceptional to do in the villainous role.

On the whole, Bharya Swamtham Suhruthu maybe well intended, but it fails to rouse the kind of reaction it was hoping for.

Rediff Rating: