Manoharam, which translates to beautiful in Malayalam, is the second directorial venture of Anwar Sadiq, While his debut film Ormayundo Ee Mukham was influenced heavily by the Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore film 50 First Dates, Sadiq has chosen a plot similar to the films of the eighties and nineties in Malayalam, with a struggling common man as the protagonist, in Manoharam.
Manoharan aka Manu (Vineeth Sreenivasan) is a talented artist who makes a living by painting billboards and banners in a small Palakkad town along with his childhood friend Prabhu (Basil Thomas). When Manu’s nemesis Rahul (Deepak Parambol) foils his marriage and plans to start a flex-printing centre in the town threatening Manu’s work, he decides to something about it.
With the help of Prabhu, his well-wisher and, his benefactor Varkey (Indrans), Manu manages to realise his dream. He learns Photoshop and in the process falls in love with his instructor Sreeja (Aparna Das). But things do not go well for him as he finds that the printer he had ordered from a scrap shop was dead on arrival. With his reputation, livelihood, home and his love at stake, Manu is forced to take drastic steps. The subsequent struggle forms the rest of the film.