‘Uppu Kappurambu’ Movie Review: Keerthy Suresh and Suhas Come Alive In This Charming Comedy

Death is everywhere in Prime Video’s Uppu Kappurambu. It starts with one, ends with one, and adds it like flourishes all around Chitti Jayapuram, the fictional village the series is woven around. But death in this small-town comedy is not ominous, but an endless fodder for comedy, mirth and delight. Any village’s story might begin with a birth, but not Chitti Jayapuram’s — its beginnings start with a tale of death and repayment. What seems in theory like an oxymoron takes flight in Ani IV Sasi’s film, which is anchored impressively by Keerthy Suresh and Suhas.

Like every small-town comedy, Uppu Kappurambu has a motley group of residents: a sarpanch worker always buried in his cup of tea, a mother/momager whose only job is to preen her daughter, and two rival bigwigs who do embarrassing things to one-up each other (Shatru and Babu Mohan). Leading these madcappers are Apoorva (Keerthy Suresh), a class clown at heart who really needs to roll up her sleeves to resolve a “deadly” matter in the village, and Chinna (Suhas), a local mortician who helps Apoorva while harbouring a secret. 

Keerthy Suresh in a still from 'Uppu Kappurambu'

The real fun with a show like this is that none of them are written just to fall into the template of characters with contrived eccentricities that never live up to their traits beyond a small introduction. Instead, writer Vasanth Maringanti neatly irons out details about people we’ve not only seen around, but would also love to see in dramatised settings. Like Cinema Bandi (a film that Maringanti wrote), the characters of Uppu Kappurambu are instantly loveable. When the village sarpanch and father (Subalekha Sudhakar) drops dead after an upma supper, Apoorva suddenly finds herself wrangling with the sarpanch position, a one that she takes up begrudgingly. And when a sensitive issue — hell breaks loose when the village burial ground fills up, save for four spots — lurks around the corner on day one of the job, a gingerly put-together Apoorva comes undone.

Suresh never plays Apoorva like a sophisticate, but renders her with a wild but childlike energy that is a tricky balancing act. Before winning over the people — who are already sceptical of a woman taking over their village — she has to win over her mother, who is hilariously aghast at her very unladylike demeanour. Suresh has plenty of fun with some physical comedy, and this is especially enjoyable in her first speech at the sarpanch meeting. Matching her crazy is Chinna, whose constant support gets a lovely foreshadowing right at their first meeting, when he swoops in to help straighten her dad’s casket.

A still from 'Uppu Kappurambu'

Suhas is especially lovely as the happy helper, who doesn’t hesitate to point out the very obvious class differences between them: “Just like how you got this job when your dad died, I got mine as a mortician when mine died,” he says with a bright smile. He cleans every headstone, speaks to them gently, and sometimes even confides in them. Despite all of this, he’s still the sanest of the lot in Chitti Jayapuram, a village that indulges and excels at the stranger things. For starters, even a lottery festival at the village is about death, where “winning” essentially means going one step closer to “dying”.

But not all is fun and games in the show, which also tries to slip in a message about how one needs privilege to even rest in peace and dignity, perhaps a nod at the discrimination that many lowered caste communities face at crematoriums. While this leads to some scenes of depth, the show also momentarily takes a dramatic detour in the climax, showing us the ugly side of human greed for the first time. But the film gathers back its semblance of sharpness to give us a sweet, but characteristically weird ending.