The story of Manjummel Boys is based on a real-life occurrence that happened in 2006 when some friends from the little hamlet of Manjummel got into a dangerous position in the Guna Caves near Kodaikanal.
On the social media site Letterboxd, which is devoted to movie reviews, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap recently posted a review of Manjummel Boys. Superb work of assured mainstream cinematography, according to Kashyap, who gave the movie high marks in his review. Far superior to every high-end Indian cinema production. How self-assured, how storytelling seems impossible. How exactly does one get a producer to even consider this idea? Only remakes of these concepts are possible in Hindi. With three consecutively outstanding Malayalam films, Hindi cinema is indeed significantly behind.
Filmmakers other than Kashyap have praised Manjummel Boys highly. At a recent J Baby promotional event, director Venkat Prabhu and Pa Ranjith gave the movie high marks.
Renowned filmmaker Venkat Prabhu, who has directed critically acclaimed films such as Saroja and Mankatha, expressed his pride with the success of Manjummel Boys in Tennessee. In an era where hero-heroine films do well, it is admirable to see a movie starring just a group of males function better than our Tamil Nadu productions. This demonstrates that only art matters and language is meaningless.