''Poochakkoru Mookkuthi'' () is a 1984 Indian

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of ...

-language

screwball comedy Screwball comedy is a film subgenre of the romantic comedy genre that became popular during the Great Depression, beginning in the early 1930s and thriving until the early 1950s, that satirizes the traditional love story. It has secondary charact ...

film written and directed by

Priyadarshan Priyadarshan Soman Nair (born 30 January 1957) is an Indian film director and screenwriter. He has worked primarily in Malayalam cinema, Malayalam and Hindi cinema, Hindi cinema since 1982, directing over 90 films in multiple Indian languages, ...

in his directorial debut. The film features an

ensemble cast In a dramatic production, an ensemble cast is one that comprises many principal actors and performers who are typically assigned roughly equal amounts of screen time.Random House: ensemble acting Linked 2013-07-17 Structure In contrast to the po ...

that includes

Mohanlal Mohanlal Viswanathan (; born 21 May 1960), known mononymously as Mohanlal, is an Indian actor and filmmaker who predominantly works in Malayalam cinema, Malayalam cinema besides also having sporadically appeared in Tamil cinema, Tamil, Hin ...

, Shankar, Menaka,

M. G. Soman M. G. Soman (28 October 1941 – 12 December 1997) was an Indian actor and former Indian Air Force officer who appeared in Malayalam films. He was one among the leading star actors doing hero roles in Malayalam Cinema during the late 1970s and ...

Nedumudi Venu Kesavan Venugopal (22 May 1948 – 11 October 2021), better known by his stage name Nedumudi Venu, was an Indian actor and screenwriter from Kerala, who predominantly worked in Malayalam cinema. He acted in more than 500 films, primarily in M ...

, C. I. Paul,

Sukumari Sukumari Amma (6 October 1940 – 26 March 2013) was an Indian actress best known for her works in Malayalam and Tamil films. In a career spanning more than five decades, She has appeared in more than 2500 films predominantly in Malayalam, T ...

Jagathy Sreekumar Sreekumar Achary (born 5 January 1951), better known by his stage name Jagathy Sreekumar or simply Jagathy, is an Indian actor, director and playback singer, who has appeared in over 1500 Malayalam films in a career spanning almost four deca ...

Kuthiravattam Pappu Padmadalakshan, better known by his stage name Kuthiravattam Pappu (24 December 1936 – 25 February 2000), was a popular Indian stage and film actor. His repertoire of acting was based on his unique style and use of the '' Kozhikodan'' dialect, ...

Sreenivasan Sreenivasan (born 6 April 1956) is an Indian actor, screenwriter, director, dubbing artist and producer who predominantly works in Malayalam cinema. Sreenivasan has starred in over 225 films. Sreenivasan wrote the screenplays of films such a ...

and Baiju Santhosh. ''Poochakkoru Mookkuthi'' marks the directorial debut of Priyadarshan, the first collaboration of Priyadarshan and Mohanlal as director and actor. Their frequent collaborator M. G. Sreekumar made his Malayalam debut as a playback singer through the film. The film was released on 17 March 1984 by Dinny Films and is regarded as one of the landmark films in Malayalam cinema. The success of the film triggered a deluge of

films in Malayalam in mid-1980s. The movie was remade in five languages. The core plotline is adapted from the Telugu movie ''Gopala Rao Gari Ammayi'' (1980) and its Tamil version ''Kodeeswaran Magal'' (1981) and also borrows plot elements the

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...

's play ''The Strange Gentleman''.

Plot

Revathi comes to the city from a small town in search of a job and to have a good life and as it is with everyone, her problem starts with finding a house. Shyam wants to become a singer. His parents are against his wish to become a singer. So he runs away from home and needs a shelter. Revathi accidentally meets Shyam, who too is in search of a house through the common milk-boy, Chikku. Chikku offers them both a house to rent if they are ready to pose as husband and wife in front of the landlord. Supran, a miserly moneylender who doesn't trust his much younger wife Kousalya is their landlord. Revathi in search of a job, meets Ravunni Menon, a rich man who owns a bungalow in the heart of the city. Ravunni Menon stays with his wife whose name too is Revathi. Gopalakrishnan needs some investment to come up in

business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for ...

and life. But to get started, he ends up having to rob his stingy father of money that the latter had hidden away out of sight of tax authorities. He is in search of a rich woman he can marry. Accidentally, Revathi meets Gopalakrishnan who has come to Ravunni Menon's house to repair the

electronic equipment Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...

, which he had sold to him. Gopalakrishnan thinks that Revathi is Ravunni Menon's daughter and her beauty enchants him. Revathi learns that there is a job in Gopalakrishnan's showroom and manages to get a job with him by playing along with his mistaken belief that she is Ravunni Menon's daughter. She is aided in this subterfuge by the fact that she shares the same name as Ravunni Menon's wife and all of his business interests are named after "Revathi". After office hours, Gopalakrishnan drops Revathi outside Ravunni Menon's house, thinking it to be her house. She always enters the bungalow through the front gate and skips out through the gate itself after hiding in the garden until Gopalakrishnan drives away. Ravunni Menon's wife, Revathi, sees her coming and going out of the bungalow and starts suspecting her husband of an affair. Gopalakrishnan frequently visits the bungalow to visit Revathi, who is never there, and Ravunni Menon thinks his wife is having an affair with Gopalakrishnan. Further her encounter with " Thenga" Govindan Pillai makes the older Revathi believe that her husband has sons and daughters out of wedlock and, thus, is quite capable of another affair now. Shyam in the meantime begins falling in love with Revathi and to make her jealous, he pretends that he is attracted to Kousalya, who in turn thinks this to be true and is ready to elope with him after robbing her miser husband. In the climax, Gopalakrishnan sends a letter to Ravunni Menon that he is in love with Revathy, who considers it to for his wife. In the confusion Revathy reveals her identity. After a complicated fight, Revathy decides to spend the rest of her life with Shyam rather than with Gopalakrishnan, who wishes them luck. All ends good as Ravunni Menon and his wife Revathy decide to not separate, as they had planned earlier

Cast

Reception and legacy

The film was distributed by Dinny Films, it was a commercial success and ran for more than 100 days in the theatres. ''Poochakkoru Mookkuthi'' is regarded as one of the landmark films in Malayalam cinema. The success of the film triggered a deluge of

films in Malayalam in mid-1980s.

Soundtrack

Remakes

The film is partly inspired by the Telugu movie ''Gopal Rao Gari Ammayi'' (1980) and its Tamil version ''Kodeeswaran Magal'' (1981). The film was adapted in Tamil in 1989 as '' Thangamani Rangamani''. It was remade in Hindi as '' Hungama'' (2003), in Telugu as '' Intlo Srimathi Veedhilo Kumari'' (2004), in Kannada as '' Jootata'' (2005), in Bangladesh Bengali as ''Bhalobeshe Bou Anbo'' (2009), in Indian Bengali as '' Le Halua Le'' (2012) and in Punjabi as ''Lovely Te Lovely'' (2015).

References

External links

* {{Priyadarshan 1980s Malayalam-language films 1984 directorial debut films 1984 films Indian screwball comedy films Malayalam films remade in other languages Films shot in Thiruvananthapuram Films directed by Priyadarshan Films scored by M. G. Radhakrishnan