Oru Jaathi Jathakam Movie Review: Vineeth Sreenivasan Plays A Problematic Character In A Laugh-Riot

Last Updated:January 31, 2025, 20:39 IST

Oru Jaathi Jathakam Movie Review: The film is about a regressive, homophobic, sexist, and fatshamming 38-year-old virgin, who struggles to find the love of his life, naturally.

Oru Jaathi Jathakam Movie Review: In a sense, Oru Jaathi Jathakam is a bold attempt as the director M Mohanan, writers Rakesh Mantodi and Sharesh Malayankandy didn’t shy away from making a comedy-drama, which for pedantic and caviller eyes might strike as problematic. In reality, the intentions of the film seem to be the opposite. Oru Jaathi Jathakam is about a problematic 38-year-old virgin named Jayesh (Vineeth Srinivasan), who is struggling to find a match due to his regressive ideas about gender, queer community, and women in general. Throughout the film, we travel with this caricature of a sexist, and the film satirises their worldview, their take on women, and things that are beyond the grasp of their regressive thought. 

Jayesh, a writer with a magazine, has numerous conditions and demands for his future bride. He wants her to be fair-skinned, stay-at-home wife/mother, heed to gender roles, and above all, her horoscope should match his. When we meet Jayesh, he is in a hurry to find a girl since his horoscope claims that his father would die if he isn’t married before 38. Nevertheless, Jayesh isn’t the compromising type. With equally-regressive family and friends around, he doesn’t budge despite his age, looks, and attitude. Oru Jaathi Jathakam is essentially his journey of meeting and rejecting women. 

It is interesting how despite not having a single redeeming trait, Jayesh doesn’t end up being a hateable protagonist. The credit goes to Vineeth Sreenivasan and his performance who projects Jayesh as a stupid person rather than a veiled human of malice. Despite his despicable traits, Vineeth effortlessly brings out a vulnerable side to this ignorant caricature. Jayesh is not even sure about his sexuality, and the whole world starts calling him a homosexual, which haunts him and his family as if they have gotten an irredeemable curse. His father (played by a brilliant PP Kunhikrishnan) finally attains peace, when he sees his son get an erection after kissing a woman, which seems to be the evidence of his ‘straight’ sexuality. There’s a subtle difference here in what is being made the laughing stock: it is not the queer community, but the entire family of Jayesh. Missing this subtlety will render the film homophobic, problematic, sexist, and even racist when the film is satirizing all these in the first place.

The transformation of Jayesh is also brought about organically. He doesn’t have an eureka moment or a character providing him the much-needed ‘gyan’. The film even makes fun of such tropes. It makes us expect one palmist woman to be the solution for Jayesh, but the way things turn out with her is another example of brilliant and witty writing. Till the end, we expect a resolution from Jayesh, but Oru Jaathi Jaathakam keeps surprising you with its ideas and intention in its unabashed way.