Manamantha - Review

After Sahasam's failure, Yeleti Chandrasekhar comes back with a family drama thriller with Manamantha. Yeleti is one of the finest film makers of Telugu cinema who got worn down by the workings of the industry with his few films being shelved due to budget constraints and that is clearly visible in this movie. His intelligence in screenplay and writing had been taken down few notches to meet the audience tastes. His writing is still in tact. Manamantha is an anthology film with four threads and one not so intelligent twist joining these four stories. But each story has its soul in right place. Mohan Lal's thread is purely for thriller drama with a good message. His dialogue on Mahatma Gandhi is spot on. In few scenes his dubbing should have been better. Gowthami's thread is very middle class-ish. This thread has its beauty in how it show cases a middle class house wife's life without any stereotypes. This is the thread every middle class person can identify with. Gowthami was more than perfect for the role. She was brilliant. Coming to the young girl's thread, it is a beautiful touching thread dealing with innocent friendships unaware of the workings of the world. Both the kids did good. The little one was cute and the girl gave a good animated performance(in a good and very peculiar way). The last thread is of a youth love story. This one is my least favorite. It is not bad but it does not suit the Yeleti style. It looked so much like Maruthi's movie.

Overall, Manamantha is a good movie with it's soul in place but pace is a bit wavery. The plot twists take their own sweet time to start. Once that happens, Yeleti's writing takes the reins and the ride becomes thrilling till the end filled up with some humanitarian values, which we tend to forget easily.