Onlinewsma Absolutely Brilliant!

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Anjoe Paul Considered as one of the evergreen classics of Malayalam cinema, Thenmavin Kombathu is always a fresh watch even after watching it a number of times. The beauty of village life that is clubbed with some of the precious moments of nature have been preserved so subtly in each and every frame of the movie. The plotline never ever misaligns with the setting of the movie that marks a key feature of this art work. The music also fits right into the plot that is of the type which is quite unheard at that time. Some of the songs from the movie are still being downloaded and remains in the playlist of people who love nostalgia. Movies centered around rustic life will have some special traits of that place to present. Here it is the bullock cart race, agrarian country life, lord-servant dependency, folkways etc. However chief among them is the belief of the community in superstitions. Thimmayya, the soothsayer subtly becomes the innocuous pivot that gears the movie quite unawaringly. The fact we can find if we watch closer that can be understood is that it is nothing but the very same set of superstitious elements that the movie is criticizing at the same time showcasing the goodness of the village people and their wishes to climb up the social ladder sometimes throgh crookedness.

Arun M R The film is centered around a village in which panchayat meetings are held to determine the fate of adulterers, cows and people wash in the river, tribal women wear special saris, and Pongal is celebrated with exciting bullock-cart races! It sounds like one of *those* village films, but it actually stays pretty lighthearted and silly until the intermission.

Cinema_freak One of Priyadarshan's completely original movies, this was (not surprisingly) the biggest Malayalam hit in 1994. We see Mohanlal as Manikyam, who happen's to be the loyal Man Friday/friend/brother to Sreekrishnan (Nedumudi Venu). Both of them fall head over heels for village beauty Karthumbi (Shobana). Mohanlal does a great job, but this is Nedumudi's movie. His act as the jealous lover forms the centrefold of the movie; everything else revolves around it. Adding fuel to his seething envy is Appakkala (Sreenivasan, who is genuinely hilarious as always). The cinematography by Santosh Sivan is breath-taking, no wonder he is lauded so much. The beautiful music is another aspect to be noted. The soundtrack went on to become the most sold soundtrack ever in Malayalam cinema, as of 1994-95.The Hindi and Telugu remakes do grave injustice to the simplicity of the original. Refrain from watching them.

Sree Nath K Firstly, this review does not contain any spoilers whatsoever so read on. Frontier melodrama about Kerala's Thazavad manorial system which is based on matrimonial Kinship. Sreekrishna (Venu), the brother of the Madambipura House's leader, Yashoda, is extremely friendly with his servant Manikan (Mohanlal). Another servant, Appakala, envious of Manikan's favored status, is the film's official villain. The Madambipura House is locked in an ancestral rivalry with the equally large establishment run by Ganjimuda Gandhari, which usually finds expression in the bullock cart race at the annual Pongal festival.Both Sreekrishna and Manikan fall in love with the beautiful itinerant theater actress Karuthumbi (Shobhana), causing Manikan to briefly fall out of favor with both Yashoda and the local law. The film's camera-work adopts the glossy style (diffusers and angled lighting calibrated to the exposure of high-speed color stock) made fashionable by Tamil cinematographer P.C.Sriram. Shot mostly at dawn and dusk, the camera-work creates a glittering fantasy world than in turn determines both plot and performances.