The estranged relationship between family members due to inter-religious love affairs is a frequently explored cinematic trope in the country. Siddique’s new film Fukri too has such an old wine of a plot, but he has stored it in a likable, humorous bottle that serves enough of screwball comedy to entertain you. Notwithstanding the predictability of the film, you sit back and relax watching the comedy of errors unfurling before your eyes.

Luqman aka Lucky (Jayasurya) is a fraudster who easily courts trouble with his group of muddleheaded friends. He meets Nafsi (Prayaga Martin) of Fukri family, who approaches his group requesting help to escape a punishment in college by chance, but the introduction leads to a lot more of slipshod predicaments, that take the comedy plot forward. Trying to use the emerging situations to her advantage is Aliya (Anu Sithara), who wants to get into the household for her own cloak and dagger intentions.

A wacky, ensemble comedy till the last frame, Fukri also has enough of tolerable melodrama and stunts. The initial few minutes of the movie makes you feel it’s a brainless, aspiring comedy, but the story picks up pace once Nafsi and Sana step in. The first half of the film, which is mostly about how Lucky lands in the ‘warring families and eloped members’ situation, plays straight for laughs. All the major characters are cakewalks for the actors handling them. The director and all those playing the friends of Lucky, however, deserve praise for keeping the audience smiling with their antics, despite the following handicaps.

In the second half, director infuses some fist-fights, sentiments, twists and also brings in some pivotal characters and this is where the audience can feel a tad bored. How Lucky makes an impression on the Fukri household, how he wins the affections of both sides of the families, tries to set things straight… all of this, in more or less the same fashion that we have witnessed a hundred times, do make you feel often that it’s is yet another factory product of a film. Siddique has made the Fukri household a ‘royal family’ and thanks to the aspect brought in, the characters often look straight out of an Ekta Kapoor serial or KJo movie – though not as fake. There is lavish borrowing from the numerous comic and sentimental scenarios that have happened in Mollywood films in the past too.

Fukri can be a wholesome fare for those starved for a fun outing but fair warning, for movie buffs looking for something fresh, this is strictly a ‘time-pass’ film.