Venkatesh Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Mana ShankaraVaraPrasad Garu,’ starring Chiranjeevi, Venkatesh, Nayanthara and Catherine Tresa

January 18, 2026

by Carla Hay

Chiranjeevi and Venkatesh in “Mana ShankaraVaraPrasad Garu” (Photo courtesy of Sarigama Cinemas)

Directed by Anil Ravipudi

Telugu with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in India, the action comedy film “Mana ShankaraVaraPrasad Garu” features a predominantly Asian cast of characters (with a few white people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A national security officer with an anger management problem has conflicts with his rich estranged wife and the wealthy mining mogul who becomes her fiancé.

Culture Audience: “Mana ShankaraVaraPrasad Garu” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and long-winded and repetitive action comedies.

Nayanthara and Chiranjeevi in “Mana ShankaraVaraPrasad Garu” (Photo courtesy of Sarigama Cinemas)

“Mana ShankaraVaraPrasad Garu” is the type of movie that didn’t need to be 156 minutes long. This mindless and long-winded action comedy, which has an obnoxious national security officer for a protagonist, quickly becomes a repetitive bore. The movie heinously tries to make child abuse look like slapstick comedy.

Written and directed by Anil Ravipudi, “Mana ShankaraVaraPrasad Garu” takes place in various cities in India, where the movie was filmed. “Mana ShankaraVaraPrasad Garu” translates to “Our Mr. Shankara Vara Prasad” in Telugu. Shankara Vara Prasad is the name of the movie’s main protagonist.

In “Mana ShankaraVaraPrasad Garu,” Shankara Vara Prasad (played by Chiranjeevi) is a national security officer who has held various positions in law enforcement in India. In the beginning of the movie, he is described as “cutthroat” and “stonheaded.” Shankara also has a nasty temper, which gets him into trouble in all aspects of his life. Shankara lives with his unnamed single mother (played by Zarina Wahab) absolutely adores him and thinks he can do no wrong.

When the movie begins, Shankara has been working for the past five years as the chief security officer for union home minister Nitin Sharma (played by Sharat Saxena), a member of parliament (MP) who overlooks Shankara’s flaws because Shankara is supposed to be the “best” security officer available. Nitin is the person who recommends Shankara for a very different job that Shankara has for about one-third of the movie.

While Shankara is a national security officer, he leads a team of four other security officers, who follow him around like loyal pets. Jwala (played by Catherine Tresa), Narayana (played by Harsha Vardhan) and Mustafa (played by Abhinav Gomatam) are the only three of these four sidekicks who speak in the movie. Jwala has the most dialogue, and her role is mainly to be the sidekick who praises Shankara the most.

One day, numerous thugs kidnap Nitin, Shankara and Shankara’s sidekicks. Shankara unrealistically defeats all of these criminals by himself through fake-looking stunt fighting and gun shootouts. Nitin is so grateful, he tells Shankara: “I love you, Prasad. You are like my family.”

This comment triggers Shankara to tell Natin his sob story about how he lost his wife and kids in a bitter breakup that happened six years ago. Shankara and his wife are separated but not officially divorced. The movie then goes into a long flashback mode to show how this marriage and separation happened. It’s supposed to make Shankara look more sympathetic, but it really exposes him as an abusive jerk.

Shankara’s estranged wife is Sasirekha, nicknamed Sasi (played by Nayanthara), who is the daughter of a wealthy business mogul named G.V.R. (played by Sachin Khedekar), who never approved of Shankara because G.V.R. wanted Sasirekha to marry a man who is on the same socioeconomic level or higher as she is. Sasirekha was supposed to marry someone else in an arranged marriage, but she ditched her groom at the wedding before taking any marriage vows, and she ran off with Shankara instead, who was a guest at the wedding. Yes, it’s that type of movie.

Sasirekha works in G.V.R.’s company as a high-ranking executive. After she and Shankara got married, G.V.R. hired Shankara to work at the company in a sales position. But G.V.R. had an ulterior motive: He made Sasirekha do a lot of traveling for her work, knowing that her time away from Shankara would put a strain on their marriage. This manipulative scheme works. Sasirekha and Shankara have an increasing number of arguments with each other because he thinks that she’s neglecting him and her home responsibilities.

During the time that Shankara and Sasirekha’s marriage reached a breaking point, they were the parents of two children under the age of 5 years old: daughter Nikki (the older child) and son Vikki. Shankara figures out that G.V.R. purposedly made Sasirekha spent a lot of time far away from home, in order to ruin the marriage. Shankara gets into a heated argument with G.V.R. in front of several employees at the office. This argument culminates with Shankara slapping G.V.R. hard in the face.

Sasirekha is horrified and demands that Shankara make an apology to G.V.R. on another day. This apology meeting also takes place at the same office, with many employees watching in the background. Instead of giving an apology, Shankara gets even angrier. He ends up slapping G.V.R. and Sasirekha hard in their faces. This abuse is the last straw for Sasirekha, who breaks up with Shankara and files a restraining order against him.

As part of the separation agreement, Sasirekha gets full custody of Nikki and Vikki, who are not allowed any contact with Shankara. As the kids grow up and are able to understand what happened to their parents’ broken marriage, Nikki (played by Khushi Soni) and Vikki (Ooha Reddy) are told that Shankara is a violent loser who doesn’t care about them. In other words, the kids are taught to fear and hate Shankara.

Here’s where the movie starts to get really stupid: Shankara tells Nitin that Nikki and Vikki currently attend a boarding school, where Shankara hopes to sneak in to see them. Nitin suggests that Shankara should instead get a job as a teacher at the school. Shankara easily gets a job as a physical education teacher at the boarding school because Nitin sent a letter of recommendation to the school’s principal (played by Vadlamani Srinivas), who is skeptical about hiring Shankara due to his lack of experience as a schoolteacher, but the principal is swayed by this recommendation letter from this influential politician.

The boarding school scenes are excruciatingly bad, as all of the cast members strain to be comical in very unfunny scenarios. Nikki (who is bossy and angry) and Vikki (who is passive and easily charmed by getting junk food as gifts) haven’t seen Shankara since they were too young to remember him, which is why they don’t know at first that this new teacher is really their father. Shankara doesn’t use any disguises, although this part of the movie uses lot of the same ideas from the 1993 movie “Mrs. Doubtfire,” a far superior comedy about a divorced dad who disguises himself as a female housekeeper/nanny to be closer to his kids.

Nikki is about 10 or 11 years old, while Vikki is about 6 or 7. It’s hard to believe that these kids wouldn’t use the Internet to find out what their own father looks like, out of curiosity. We’re supposed to believe that Nikki and Vikki have been so brainwashed to hate their father, they don’t care to know what he looks like. The movie also wants viewers to assume that somehow, Sasirekha was able to keep all photos of Shankara away from the kids. Shankara looks exactly the same when he starts working for the school as he did when he Sasirekha broke up.

A few of the scenes with the boarding school students involve kids getting assaulted by adults, who slap children in the face or punch the kids in other areas of their bodies. The filmmakers of this garbage movie want viewers to laugh at this child abuse. There’s also an awful sequence where Shankara has conflicts with a bratty student named Sugunesh, whose main purpose in the movie is to be fat-shamed when he becomes a nuisance to Shankara. It’s disgusting filmmaking that shouldn’t be condoned.

Of course, Shankara’s plans to go “undercover” in this boarding school inevitably fall apart, as Sasirekha, Nikki and Vikki find out about Shankara’s ridiculous scheme. “Mana ShankaraVaraPrasad Garu” then has a bloated and very irritating stretch of the movie about Shankara having a rivalry with Sasirekha’s arrogant fiancé Venky Gowda (played by Venkatesh), a wealthy mining mogul who used to be Shankara’s colleague in law enforcement. There’s also an idiotic subplot about a revenge scheme involving a kidnapping and attempted murder. Sudev Nair has a supporting role as a police inspector named Virendra Panda.

“Mana ShankaraVaraPrasad Garu” is an example of how certain movies glorify toxic abusers, who think they can redeem themselves just by killing people who are considered more dangerous. It’s an awful way to make movies, especially when these types of films are just overblown junkpiles of exploitative violence, atrocious dialogue and horrendous acting performances. Cutesy song-and-dance numbers that are thrown into the mix do not erase the cinematic stink of these types of putrid movies.

Sarigama Cinemas released “Mana ShankaraVaraPrasad Garu” in U.S. cinemas on January 16, 2026. The movie was released in India on January 12, 2026.

Review: ‘Patang’ (2025), starring Vamsi Pujit, Preethi Pagadala and Pranav Kaushik

January 8, 2026

by Carla Hay

Pranav Kaushik, Preethi Pagadala and Vamsi Pujit in “Patang” (Photo courtesy of Rishaan Cinemas)

“Patang” (2025)

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.

Gautham Vasudev Menon and Preethi Pagadala in “Patang” (Photo courtesy of Rishaan Cinemas)

“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.

Review: ‘Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan,’ starring Salman Khan, Pooja Hegde, Venkatesh and Jagapathi Babu

April 26, 2023

by Carla Hay

“Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan”

Directed by Farhad Samji

Hindi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in India, the action film “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” (a remake of the 2014 film “Veeram”) features an all-Indian cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A marriage-phobic vigilante teams up with his three foster brothers to fight crime, including trying to stop a murder plot against the family of his love interest.

Culture Audience: “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of “Veeram,” the movie’s headliners, and mindless action movies that are aggressively stupid.

Siddharth Nigam, Pooja Hegde, Raghav Juyal and Jassie Gill in “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” (Photo courtesy of Zee Studios)

Get ready for your hearing and your brain cells to be assaulted when watching the loud, bombastic and idiotic “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan.” Note to filmmakers who make this type of trash: Stop the madness. Cast people who can act. It’s the same junk: a ‘hero’ in fake action scenes, a pretty love interest, revenge plots, murders. No one respects overly long, boring, and unoriginal garbage.

Directed by Farhad Samji (who co-wrote the mindless screenplay with Sparsh Khetarpal and Tasha Bhambra), “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” is yet another unnecessary remake that is inferior to the original movie. “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” (which means “someone’s brother, someone’s lover” in Hindi) is a remake of the 2014 Tamil-language film “Veeram.” There’s so much bad acting in “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan,” you have to wonder if the filmmakers made these choices as a way to torture viewers, who will already have their endurance tested by the movie’s 144-minute total running time and the excessively loud sound design throughout the entire film.

In “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan,” the dimwit protagonist with a lot of muscles but very little charm is Bhaijaan, nicknamed Bhai (played by Salman Khan), a never-married bachelor who doesn’t seem to be doing anything with his life but being a violent vigilante who fights crime in his home city of Delhi. As shown later in the movie, Bhai has this to say about men who cry tears when expressing emotions: “Crying is for losers.” Bhai has three sidekicks in his crime-fighting efforts: Ishq (played by Raghav Juyal), Moh (played by Jassie Gill) and Love (played by Siddharth Nigam), who all call themselves brothers of Bhai.

These four men are actually not biologically related to each other. It’s revealed in a flashback shown early on in the movie that Ishq, Moh and Love were orphans. Bhai rescued Ishq, Moh and Love from an orphanage fire when Ishq, Moh and Love were about 6 or 7 years old, and Bhai was about 16 or 17. Bhai raised Ishq, Moh and Love as if they were his brothers.

In the flashback, Bhai only looks about 10 years older than Ishq, Moh and Love. In the present day, Bhai looks about 20 to 25 years older than his “brothers.” It’s one of many examples of how the movie is sloppily made. Salman Khan’s mother Salma Khan is the main producer of “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan,” which is obviously a family vanity project. It’s a lot easier to get cast in the starring role of movie, no matter how terrible your acting is, if you have a parent who’s paying for the movie to get made.

The brotherly bond between these four men is so tight, it’s affected all of their love lives. Bhai is commitment-phobic when it comes to love and romance. He has said he never wants to get married. Ishq, Moh and Love crave Bhai’s approval, so they say the same things. However, Ishq, Moh and Love secretly have girlfriends, who are growing frustrated that they can’t be open about their respective relationships with Ishq, Moh and Love.

Ishq’s girlfriend is Sukoon (played by Shehnaaz Gill), Moh’s girlfriend is Muskaan (played by Palak Tiwari), and Love’s girlfriend is Chahat (played by Vinali Bhatnagar). Sukoon, Muskaan and Chahat don’t have a lot of screen time. But when they do appear, it’s only to whine about their love lives.

In fact, “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” cares so little about women, the only women characters with significant speaking roles in the movie mainly exist for the purpose of being love interests for the men. It’s all very backwards and unimaginative filmmaking, just like many other aspects of this very outdated-looking movie.

Ishq, Moh and Love want to go public with their girlfriends, so they hatch a plot to find a girlfriend for Bhai. The idea is that if Bhai falls in love, he will ease up on his rigid view that these four “brothers” cannot have serious love relationships. Ishq, Moh and Love know that Bhai had a serious romance when he was younger with a woman named Bhagyalakshmi, nicknamed Bhagya.

Ishq, Moh and Love heard that Bhagya currently lives in Mumbai. And so, these three “Brothers” decide to find her and play matchmaker. But these three dolts don’t do what most people in modern society would do: an Internet search to find out first what Bhagya’s relationship status is. When they get to Mumbai, they find out that Bhagya is happily married with a child. Once again, it’s outdated filmmaking and stupidity on display.

This matchmaking farce just wastes time in this already bloated movie. The next unrealistic thing that Ishq, Moh and Love do is try to find a woman named Bhagyalakshmi, nicknamed Bhagya, who is attractive enough to date Bhai. That’s how Bhai meets Bhagyalakshm “Bhagya” Gundamaneni (played by Pooja Hegde), who works as an “antiques researcher.” Bhagya, who also calls herself “Bhaggy,” lives in Andhra Pradesh, India.

Bhai and Bhagya have their “meet cute” moment when she bumps into him at an outdoor market in Hyderabad, and she drops an antique vase that goes crashing on the ground. Bhai is immediately smitten with the new Bhagya in his life, but she predictably plays hard-to-get. Bhagya is probably one of the most annoying characters in the movie because she’s a stereotype of a helpless and ditzy “damsel in distress” who’s waiting to be rescued by a male love interest. It doesn’t help that Hegde’s terrible acting is hard to watch.

Bhagya tells Bhai up front that any man she dates has to get the approval of her brother Balakrishna Gundamaneni (played by Venkatesh), who is domineering and overprotective. Balakrishna, who is married with a young daughter, also hates violence. And since Bhai leads a very violent life, much of the movie is about his trying to hide the truth from Bhagya and her family.

Every action movie at least one villain. And in “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan,” there are two villains: First, there is Mahavir (played by Vijender Singh), who is the type of villain who wears a lot of business suits. Mahavir hates how Bhai and his sidekicks are ruining his criminal enterprises, so he wants to kill all four of these vigilantes.

The other villain is Kodati Nageshwar (played by Jagapathi Babu), a thug who wants to kill Balakrishna and all of the members of Balakrishna’s immediate family. This revenge killing was already planned before Bhai and Bhagya started dating each other. The reason for this murder plot is so obvious, because the movie has no subtlety in showing and repeating how fanatical Balakrishna is about being against violence.

“Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” has some standard musical numbers which further drag out an already vapid story. The songs in these musical scenes are forgettable and trite. Salman Khan is not a skilled dancer, so it’s somewhat amusing to see him try to keep up with the backup dancers in these musical scenes. That amusement is slight though, and it will just give way to more irritation as “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” keeps piling on scenes that are idiotic and don’t really go anywhere, including some scenes that have obnoxiously blatant product-placement shilling of Pepsi.

Filmmakers will continue to churn out dreck like “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” if they think it will make them any money. That doesn’t mean that people who like movies automatically have to watch this type of relentless insult to viewers’ intelligence. Avoid “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” at all costs. Your brain cells will thank you.

Zee Studios released “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on April 21, 2023.