January 8, 2026
by Carla Hay
Directed by Praneeth Prattipati
Telugu with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in Hyderabad, India, the comedy/drama film “Patang” features an Indian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Two best friends become enemy rivals when they both fall for the same woman, and they decide to have a kite-flying contest to settle their differences.
Culture Audience: “Patang” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and don’t mind watching unrealistic, poorly acted movies about romance and friendship.
“Patang” is a long-winded and irritating comedy/drama about a love triangle that results in a kite-flying competition with tacky visual effects. The movie gets worse as it drags to its over-stretched ending. This is the type of movie that looks like it was conceived by a teenager who grew up to be a filmmaker who didn’t bother to update the adult characters to act like how real adults would act.
Written and directed by Praneeth Prattipati, “Patang” (which means “kite” in Telugu) takes place in Hyderabad, India. The movie has such a long build-up to this kite-flying contest, the contest doesn’t happen until the last 30 minutes of this 162-minute film. By the end of the movie, you won’t really care who wins, as long as you don’t have to see these flaky and annoying characters again.
“Patang” begins by showing the kite-flying contest taking place in a stadium. And even though the stadium is only about 40% full, it’s a major sporting event that’s being televised and has other extensive media coverage. Is this an event between kite-flying professionals? No.
As the movie explains, this event is happening because two former best friends are angry with each other because they both want to date the same woman. “Patang” doesn’t bother with pesky details, such as who would pay to rent a stadium over something this trivial. Viewers are supposed to believe that Hyderabad is treating this kite-flying contest as a major sporting event.
The woman at the center of this love triangle is sitting by herself in the stadium before the kite-flying contest begins. Her name is Aishwarya (played by Preethi Pagadala), and she’s a college student who’s studying architecture. But what she really wants to do with her life, as revealed later, is open her own cafe.
The stadium stetting for this grudge match is unrealistic enough. The movie gets even more unrealistic when filmmaker/actor Gautham Vasudev Menon (portraying a version of himself) sits down next to Aishwarya, introduces himself, and asks her why this kite-flying contest is happening. Aishwarya then tells the story about the two best friends and the love triangle that got them to this point, but she plays coy and doesn’t tell him right away that she’s the person at the center of the love triangle.
The movie then goes into flashback mode, as Aishwarya tells the story, before circling back to the kite-flying contest that happens toward the end of the movie. Aishwarya goes all the way back to the childhoods of best friends Vishnu “Whisky” Krishna and Arun, who met while kite flying when they were about 8 or 9 years old. Amasa Bhanu Prakash has the role of childhood Whisky. Ruthvik Varma has the role of childhood Arun.
Whisky is the more extroverted and more charismatic of the two friends. He’s a natural leader. Arun is quieter, more introverted and more of a follower. Arun becomes so close to Whisky, Arun asks his parents (played by S.P. Charan and Anu Hasan) if he can transfer to the same school as Whisky. Anu’s parents allow this transfer.
As adults in their early 20s, Whisky (played by Vamsi Pujit) and Arun (played by Pranav Kaushik) are mischief makers who love to get drunk, smoke marijuana, and carouse on the streets of Hyderabad. They hang out in a group with other like-minded guys named Basha (played by Venkatesh), Shiva (played by Rajeshwar Vemula), Rambo (played by Vishal Silveru) and Pencil (played by Guarav Sunil), who also like to get intoxicated and play pranks. The six pals are first seen together getting into trouble for dressing up as women to rob people on the street.
Much later in the movie, the six pals are shown doing a much more dangerous and heinous prank that could get people killed: They place a lot of broken glass on a railroad track before a train passes through the tracks. The glass is placed on the part of the track where the train wheels go. An idiotic movie like “Patang” shows a train approaching the track but doesn’t show the consequences of this crime.
Arun’s parents have a tension-filled marriage where they are constantly arguing with each other. Arun’s mother doesn’t approve of Arun hanging out with Whisky and the other troublemakers and worries that unemployed Arun is wasting his potential. She tells Arun that she won’t dictate who his friends are, but she makes it clear that she thinks Arun’s friends are “bloody scumbags.”
Whisky’s parents (played by Bindu Chandramouli and Sivannarayana) are not featured as prominently in the movie as Arun’s parents. Whisky has a small food stand to make money. It’s how he meets Aishwarya, who buys pani puri from him. Whisky is instantly smitten with Aishwarya.
Whisky flirts with Aishwarya by telling her that today is her lucky day because she’s a customer who’s won free unlimited pani puri from him. Aishwarya comes back for more pani puri the next and the next. Whisky continues to flirt with her and lets her know that he wants to date her, but she plays hard to get.
But after Whisky doesn’t Aishwarya for four consecutive days, he begins to worry and starts looking for her. He finds out that Aishwarya is in a hospital for food poisoning from eating his pani puri. Aishwarya is annoyed with Whisky shows up in her hospital room, but she is charmed by his apology and his persistence, so she agrees to date him.
Things are going smoothly between Whisky and Aishwarya until one night when Aishwarya ends up having a conversation with Arun. Aishwarya is intrigued when Arun, who is traditionally better-looking than Whisky, describes himself as unlucky in love because women he wants to date always put him in the “friend zone.”
During this date, Arun ends up punching a cop (don’t ask), so Arun and Aishwarya end up in jail. Arun’s father and Whisky bail out Arun and Aishwarya. Arun says jubilantly that it’s been the best night of his life. Aishwarya begins to become more attracted to Arun, because now she thinks he’s a “bad boy.”
Arun and Aishwarya begin having secret meet-ups where Aishwarya says they should act on their attraction to each other. Arun expresses a lot of reluctance and discomfort about betraying Whisky, but Aishwarya says that if Whisky is a true friend, then Whisky will forgive Arun. Aishwarya and Arun begin a secret affair.
Because this love triangle is already revealed in the movie’s trailer, you can easily predict that Whisky is going to find out about Aishwarya cheating on him with Arun. It leads to arguments that result in Whisky breaking up with Aishwarya, Aishwarya breaking up with Arun, and Whisky becoming bitterly estranged from Arun and Aishwarya.
It takes an awfully long time to get there. In between, there are some fairly entertaining song-and-dance numbers, but the spoken dialogue is kind of awful. The movie’s tone veers back and forth between over-the-top melodrama and silly comedy.
By the time the kite-flying contest challenge is declared, viewers will be thinking, “Get on with it already.” But no. There’s another long, drawn-out section of the movie where Arun has to assemble a kite-flying team because his pals Basha, Shiva, Rambo and Pencil are siding with Whisky in this feud and are on Whisky’s kite-flying team.
In the end, Arun recruits his teenage sister Aditi (played by P. Vignani); a nerdy pal named Kiwi (played by Kvish Kautilya), who likes to play video games with Arun; Arun’s platonic female friend Lakshmi (played by Vishika), who’s been in love with Arun since childhood; and Arun’s father Shekar, who is also the team’s coach. Arun’s team, which wears purple, is called the Pizza Panthers because Aditi likes to make pizza. Whisky’s team, which wears orange, is called the Biryani Boyz because Whisky likes to make biryani.
There’s hardly any kite-flying in the movie until the actual contest, which is just a repetitive back-and-forth of the contestants trying to use the kite ropes to slice an opponent’s kite ropes. It would be an understatement to say that none of it looks believable. Even after the contest is over, “Patang” drags on with more stupidity.
“Patang” has some underlying misogyny that is also very off-putting. Lakshmi is treated like a pathetic nuisance until Arun and Whisky both use her for their selfish purposes. Aishwarya is portrayed as manipulative temptress, as if Arun shouldn’t have equal responsibility in betraying Whisky. “Patang” tries to resolve all of these conflicts in ways that are grating, tiresome and definitely don’t make kite-flying look fun or attractive.
Rishaan Cinemas released “Patang” in select U.S. cinemas on January 1, 2026. The movie was released in India on December 25, 2025.
