There are reports spreading in various social media pages that ‘Munnariippu’, one of the best Malayalam films got released this year starring Mammootty is a copycat of a Hollywood film named ‘Life of David Gale’ which was released in the year 2003. Kevin spacy did the lead role in that film. This Hollywood movie was directed by Alan Parker. And heroine was the Titanic fame Kate Vincelet.
Munnariyippu was scripted by the notable writer R Unni and directed by K B Venu. It was a Renjith production under the banner of Gold coin Motion pictures Ltd. Reports says that Munnariyippu is almost similar to Life of David Gale except for its climax part. In Munnariyippu Mammootty’s character goes to jail after committing his third Murder. But in Life of David Gale, the protagonist was hanged to death in the climax. The rumors were started from the time of the release of ‘Munnariyippu’ and many people found out the similarities between the two films. As per reports, They informed the media about the similarities. But no one made it public as the script writer Unni was himself a media professional and media professionals supported their colleague.
In Life of David Gale, Kate Wincelet act as a newspaper reporter who comes in search of David Gale who is waiting his death penalty. She gives him 5 lakh rupees with the help of his lawyer and thus he began to tell his story. He was a philosophy professor earlier. But in Munnariyippu they created Raghavan as an ordinary person with extra ordinary philosophical thoughts. The mental state and agony of both David Gale and Raghavan is the same in these films. The story is rather the same with only a minor difference had made according to the cultural background of Kerala. Aparana Gopinath played the role of the journalist in Munnariyippu.
Reports also says that after seeing the film Life of David Gale, director Venu appointed Unni to write a script based on that film. Unni’s earlier scripts like Big B, Chappa Kurish etc are also copycats from foreign language films. Anyway Munnariyippu has got great critical reception in Kerala and also got a decent commercial success.
