Maheshum Marutiyum follows the story of a man who is really attached to his father’s car, a 1983 model Maruti 800. The events that follow revolving around him and his car does form the rest of the story. The story here is well intended especially with its core theme of a person being attached to his car wherein nothing is more important to him other than his prized object. But it is the screenplay standing at 130 odd minutes that uncannily misses the mark. For starters, it is a little too long for a theme like this. As a result, things do get repetitive along the way. And secondly and more importantly, the proceedings are uneventful and that is the biggest undoing here.

The drama here does have all the ingredients for a heartwarming drama which would tug the strings of your heart. There is a fair bit of world building too wherein you are introduced to the young protagonist and the first glimpse of the brand new Maruti 800 which was a luxury back in the day in the 1980s. You are also introduced to the people around him including the childhood sweetheart of the protagonist until fate sets them apart. However, I did feel that the writing did need to pack in a lot of emotions during this world building which would have resulted in a payback later on. In other words, the foundation wasn’t strong here.

The proceedings are decent but inconsistent from the storytelling perspective. It does bring about a string of unrelated events which are half hearted and half baked that did not connect with me at all. Probably, the story could have been focused a little more around the car by creating heartwarming moments instead of just showing the protagonist being attached to it. The emotional factor behind the attachment was missing here. The drama does include multiple conflicts but oddly so, the conflicts which are introduced in one scene and resolved in the very next scene. What that does is that it doesn’t quite allow the viewers to be emotionally invested in the drama at any given point of time.

The budding love story that formulates a major part of the second half is decent but somewhere the chemistry or the warmness of a love story is missing. This is attributed to the fact that the character of Mamta Mohandas was absent for major part of the first half. So when her character re-enters at the half way point, there isn’t much time that the viewers get in getting invested in her. Somewhere along the way, I could sense that the emotions are present but just hidden beneath a very ordinary screenplay. The twist and the final reveal at the end may have been interesting on paper but the emotions again do not land. So overall, the screenplay here is disappointing and a rare miss from the Malayalam film industry.