Suraj Venjaramoodu in ‘Nagendran’s Honeymoons’.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Nagendran, the titular character in Nagendran’s Honeymoons, appears to be a creation of convenience. He is written as a naive, hapless man who would roll without resistance in any direction that he gets kicked. Nothing appears to interest him except good food. Not even a glimmer of desire is visible in his eyes when he looks at any of the six women he marries, one in each episode of the series.
This portrayal is convenient in deflecting the anger that one must naturally feel towards a man who indulges in serial marriage fraud. His close friend Soman (Prasanth Alexander), a marriage broker and a drama artiste, is the character written in such a way as to bear the brunt of the anger. The scheming Soman devises plans to fix Nagendran (Suraj Venjaramoodu)‘s marriage with multiple women, one after the other, to swindle the dowry money.
Nagendran’s Honeymoon (Malayalam, web series)
Director: Nithin Renji Panicker
Cast: Suraj Venjaramoodu, Prasanth Alexander, Kani Kusruti, Shweta Menon, Ramesh Pisharody, Grace Antony
Runtime: 6 episodes, 30-35 minutes each
Storyline: Lazy Nagendran has dreams of going to the Gulf and comes up with a plan to make money for the trip: marriage and dowry.
Nagendran goes with the plan without resistance, abandoning each of the women without remorse so that he can get enough money to fly to Kuwait with the help of another friend. In another writing choice notable for its convenience, most of the women have a flaw – Lilly (Grace Antony) has mental health issues and indulges in bouts of violence, Laila (Shweta Menon) is out from jail having served a term for murder, Savithri (Niranjana Anoop) is pregnant from another man and Thankam (Kani Kusruthi) is a sex worker. A crime committed against a flawed character would appear to be forgivable. Nagendran also gets a shot at redemption with an honourable confession, quite uncharacteristic of how he was behaving till that point.
Most of the episodes are iterations of the same narrative, of the fraudulent duo entrapping a vulnerable woman in marriage. One thing that saves the poorly written episodes is the change in locale in each, from the backwaters to the highlands all across Kerala. Some thoughtful work gets done in recreating the late 1970s time period in which the story is set, but the background score used to evoke the period only works at a few points, while it appears jarring at other places.
For filmmaker Nithin Renji Panicker, who debuted with the controversial Kasaba (2016) and made the rather forgettable Kaaval (2021), some of the episodes in Nagendran’s Honeymoons are signs of slight improvement. But, some others, like the one set in Ottapalam, are written unimaginatively. The entire extended part of Savithri’s romance with a college professor and the emotional drama in her household would make us wonder whether it was a spoof on some old film. But, no, the makers are dead serious about this.
The saving grace in the series is the performance of Prasanth Alexander and, to an extent, that of Suraj Venjaramoodu, Grace Antony, Shweta Menon, and Kani Kusruthi. It was also a joy to watch yesteryear actor Janardhanan after a long time. Nagendran’s Honeymoons is an unimaginatively written series that does not tread any new ground.
Nagendran’s Honeymoon is currently streaming on Disney+ Hotstar