What you’re likely to feel about Venky Atluri and Suriya's Vishwanath & Sons will largely depend on how you feel about Mamitha Baiju’s performance in it. She plays Maddy, a surrogate mother who enters the life of Vishwanath's titular son when he’s emotionally blackmailed into finding an heir to his $5.4 billion fortune. Atluri could have used several descriptors to explain Maddy’s character to Mamitha Baiju, but there’s no denying the hangover of a thousand loosu ponnus of Tamil cinema who had to walk, just so Mamitha could run.
It’s easily Mamitha’s loudest performance yet, the kind that demands she underlines every expression, as though she’s making sure it can be seen from space. If a scene requires her to simply say ‘no’, not only does she say the word, but she also shrugs her shoulders, jumps off the table she’s sitting on and then shakes her head in exasperation to convey her objection. It’s meant to look cute, like the immature histrionics of a carefree youngster who is thrust into a world full of grownups. If you’re able to buy into the largeness of her performance, chances are that you might enjoy the largeness of Vishwanath & Sons as well. But if you do not, it’s a film that can get gratingly plasticky super quickly.
The aforementioned son of Vishwanath, Sanjay (Suriya), is the billionaire who is suffering from a lineage problem. He has sworn to never get married, and the film’s first half is made up of many scenes where his mother arm-twists him into bringing them an heir. Instead of interpersonal dynamics between mother and son, we get ridiculously over-the-top visuals to show you their wealth, just in case you missed it. It’s a family drama after all, and a large portion of the film is set in their huge mansion. But instead of asking the art director to erect a set that looks like a house, the instruction seems to have been to recreate a Bauhaus airport to double up as Sanjay’s mansion. As we try to focus on seemingly important things like dialogue and plot, it's easier to imagine James Bond villains using this house as their preferred Airbnb.
This lack of subtlety in all aspects of filmmaking gives you the feeling that you’re either watching a jewellery advertisement or a big-budget television serial. The lighting feels flat and jarring, with the usually dependable cinematographer Nimish Ravi not able to do much with the source material. The writing too lacks any narrative smoothness, with sub-plots and characters popping out of nowhere. In one scene that’s set in a restaurant, you’ll feel clueless if you try to place it within the larger context of the story. It’s a Suriya film after all, and the only way one can overlook such senseless detours is to call it an obligatory fight scene for a mass action hero.
As hard as it may sound, the only way to make sense of Vishwanath & Sons is to buy into the film’s over-the-top earnestness. The brief for the film seems to have been to make Suriya a tailor-made rewrite of Allu Arjun’s Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo. This allows for the star to focus on playing saviour within his own household instead of the usual task of saving the world like he must in other films. If its novelty comes from the “will-they-won't-they” romantic equation with Mamitha’s role, the real emotional depth arises from the character played by Raveena Tandon.
The scenes involving Suriya and Tandon are some of the film’s best, allowing the film to show signs of being surprisingly perceptive. But even these scenes are stuffed with so much of everything that we struggle to see the merit in what it’s trying to say.
Of what’s left in this heavily Telugu-coded film, it is Suriya who makes any difference at all. It feels like it’s been forever since we saw him in a film where he’s finally allowed to relax and just be. We forget how good he can be in comedy, and a sub-plot involving Sanju’s secret trips to Europe reminds us of just how much we miss the days when Suriya wasn’t constantly grappling with the weight of the universe on his shoulders. If not anything else, this alone could be reason enough to indulge in the tacky, corny world of Vishwanath & Sons. It can be overly sentimental and almost jarringly old-school in its values, but after decades of saving the world, maybe it was time for Suriya to remain still, tone down his earnestness and just make a movie without worrying about its message.