‘Mithra Mandali’ movie review: Priyadarshi, Rag Mayur, Vishnu Oi’s buddy comedy is more noise, little fun

In the 1990s and the early 2000s, the late director EVV Satyanarayana specialised in films that relied heavily on the calibre of their ensemble cast, more than the leads. The premise would have a quirky hook and a purpose to validate the presence of the cast. The laughs kept coming, and the films came with a minimum-guarantee value at the theatrical market despite not having starring names.

While that style of filmmaking had lost its mojo for a while, the success of films such as Jathi Ratnalu, MAD, Om Bheem Bush and Aay marked their resurgence, with the stories centred on good-for-nothing buddies, in recent years. Mithra Mandali, helmed by debutant Vijayendar S, attempts to capitalise on this success formula, where the plot serves as a pretext to have fun with pop-culture references and trends rooted in Telugu culture.

Mithra Mandali, in terms of its central idea, is a love story that takes a jibe at extreme casteism and how the life of a wastrel trio nosedives when the daughter of an influential politician falls for one of them. It opens with a series of scenes positioning a politician, Narayana (VTV Ganesh), as the torchbearer for his caste (with a fictitious name), who does whatever it takes to uphold its pride.

Narayana ropes in a writer to put together success stories of prominent names belonging to his caste, but rips him apart when the book doesn’t even last two pages. When he realises that a man from another ethnic group donates blood to someone from his caste, he kills both of them. He cannot stand men/women from another caste even touching him, and has a reverent army that believes the same.

When Narayana realises that his daughter Sweccha (Niharika NM) has eloped, he asks the cop to register a kidnap case as a face-saving act. The focus later shifts to four wastrels (played by Priyadarshi, Rag Mayur, Prasad Behara and Vishnu Oi) entangled in the case. A flashback dates back to a subplot that unites Sweccha and the men, resulting in chaos.

The ‘Jathi Ratnalu meets Hangover’ style treatment has enough ingredients to fire all cylinders — oddball characters, smart backstories, eccentric situations, a romance unfolding at a spoken English class, a parody on present-day influences — but the bland writing barely provides the vigour to liven up the humour. The intent to make an unserious film on serious social ills falls apart gradually.

While the self-aware comedy around the four aimless, debt-ridden friends wasting their time, their tryst with English works in bits and pieces, the pivotal issue with the film is Sweccha’s characterisation and her supposed love story. There’s a cheeky twist to the romance, but the man’s reciprocation of her love is taken for granted; you never know his side of the story.

Sweccha, in most situations, is treated like a mechanical plot device without a persona of her own; we only know that she learns martial arts/karate to be ever-ready for a day when she has to fight for love, braving her casteist father and his men. At times, you feel she’s too smart to fall for the guy and is simply playing dumb to get away from her dad.

Mithra Mandali, while still retaining its parody tone, could have had at least one segment where the leads are sincere to an emotion (without playing to the galleries, say like Aay) and built the screenplay around it. The deadpan humour gets on your nerves, especially in the second hour, and several actors look clueless with the pitch of their performances.

There are flashes of the relentless laughter ride that the film could have been — the comedy around a police station in an area named Janglipatnam that functions below an old-age home, the presence of Sathya as a nameless character who delivers high-handed preachy dialogues without a context and the ‘pulihora’ scene set at a temple. Otherwise, Mithra Mandali is more cacophony than humour. 

The conversational songs that worked wonders for Little Hearts recently are quite forgettable here (composed by RR Dhruvan). Desperation kicks in as the makers try to infuse some momentum into the proceedings with ‘Jambar Gimbar Lala’, modelled on Amitabh’s Mere Angne Mein, in a serious situation. Though the last half-hour fares slightly better, the climax is a formality, still not witty enough.

Surprisingly, the popular names — Priyadarshi, Vennela Kishore, VTV Ganesh — struggle with their timing/improvisation (perhaps due to the inadequacies of the material). Rag Mayur, Vishnu Oi do their best to stay true to the spirit of the situations, though the heavy-lifting is largely done by Prasad Behara and Sathya. There’s no dull moment when Sathya is around.

Niharika NM strolls around and robotically delivers her lines, struggling to rise above an underwritten character. Sathya Prakash’s humour around the lisp does not explode enough. The excessive use of slow-motion shots is another dampener. 

Mithra Mandali may have looked like a decent entertainment package on paper, though the cluttered and flimsy execution spoils the fun.

Published – October 16, 2025 11:19 am IST