Manamantha

Manamanthaa (2016): Chandra Shekar Yeleti is one of the rare talents of Tollywood who has amazing talent in movie making and all his pictures are critically acclaimed but he did not have much financial success.His movies are always a treat for movie lovers but not for commercial minded audience.He is one of the few directors in Tollywood who can make movies of different genres.Let it be thriller like Anukokunda Oka Roju and Okkadunnadu,romance like Prayanam,crime like Aithe,adventure like Sahasam,Yeleti always gives his best output.Now its his turn for emotional drama Manamantha which deals with four different people lives and their problems.Malayalam super star Mohanalal acted in Tollywood after a long time with this movie.How is it???

Plot: Manamantha is about four people Sai Ram (Mohanlal),Gayatri (Gouthami),Abhiram (Vikranth),Mahitha(Raina Rao).

Sairam is an assistant manager in a supermarket and is perpetually in debt. He even borrows a few thousands from a store assistant.He always has a competition issue with Harshavardhan for manager post.Sai Ram is in deep need of Manager post as it may settle all his debt.To achieve it he takes a wrong step which lands him in serious problems which may spoil his life and family.

Gayatri (Gautami) is a housewife struggling to make ends meet. She seeks happiness in little things, like grocery shopping with her neighbor (Urvashi). She meets an unexpected guest from her past who may change her life which may clears all her problems of middle class issue.

Abhiram (Viswant) is a bright student who soldiers on with his old and bulky laptop.His life seems perfectly alright with his grades and goals until he meets Airi(Anisha Ambrose).He loves her and become good friend with her but it affects his study.

Mahita (Raina Rao) is an endearing school girl who takes a liking to a four-year-old boy Veer who lives in a slum and will do what she can to see that he goes to a school.But shockingly one day Veer goes missing.Mahita tries to find Veer by facing lot of problems where she understands the humanity of present people.

Plus Points:

1)Performances: Manamanthaa has brilliant performances of all the four roles. Mohanlal is pitch perfect as Sairam, reflecting the frustrations of a guy caught in a deep problems and feeling guilty. The actor needs to be commended for his effort to speak in Telugu. His Telugu is laced with a Malayalam accent but lends authenticity to his part. Gautami proves yet again why she used to be the best in the business and is sublime as the housewife.She gave mesmerizing performance and needed to be applauded.Debutante Raina Rao as the schoolgirl is a surprise and walks away with all the applause. She played her role with such perfection that we love her cute innocence and her helping nature.Viswanth did good in his role which has nothing special.

2)Second half: Manamantha has one of the best emotional scenes of recent times in its second half.Every scene in second half is well made and is so emotional that tears will stay in your eyes until the movie is completed.All the characters enter their serious phases of their lives and movie gets a fast pace which is both emotional and thrilling.Climax is awesome and unexpected.

3)Direction: Yeleti once again proved that why he has special fame in Tollywood cinema.He cleverly turned a family drama into an entertaining and unique thriller.The way he took a simple story line and made it thrilling is just amazing. He also excelled in extracting the best performance from his actors.

Minus Points:

1)Story of Abhiram (Viswanth): Of all four characters,story of Abhiram is weakest one.Its a routine love story where a topper guy neglects his life for the love of a girl.Though it has connection to the story,it could have been made better with better scenes.Emotion is missing in those scenes.

So Manamanthaa is one of the best emotional drama of recent rimes.Surprisingly Manamanthaa almost brought tears in my eyes with such brilliant emotion.Must watch one....

My rating 7.5/10

A film with very high technical values and exceptional story telling by the maker. More importantly a suspense thriller with middle class characters that will touch you and shake you

"Manamantha" is a human drama with simple emotions and subtle sensibilities. It follows the journey of four people at different phases in their life. Four different and distinct stories, different paths are interlinked in the end with a neat twist. Though the twist is not hard to expect, it has actually enhanced the emotional buildup in the ending of the movie.

Director Chandrasekhar Yeleti who is known for making thrillers like "Aithey", and "Anukokunda Oka Roju" has shown that he is also at ease directing movies with emotional content.

Stories about different people and all of them are getting linked in the end with one incident or situations is seen in films like "Chandamama Kathalu", but Yeleti treads different path here.

The four people and four different stories are linked with a completely new twist, which is what the movie's core emotion is all about. Like in "Drushyam", the final episodes of the story leaves a lump in our throat.

Like most people in regular life, Mohanlal is shown here taking "hand loans" from colleagues, becoming selfish when an opportunity comes to become a manager from asst manager. This greediness lands him in a big trouble and when he comes to know the situation has gone out of hands, the way Mohanlal repents, and goes through emotional upheaval are presented beautifully.

Apart from Mohanlal's thread, the other beautiful thread is of Raina Rao who played the role of a good-hearted kid who lands in trouble helping a poor kid. Raina and the poor kid both have played so naturally. Yeleti has shown his maturity and mark here in these sequences.

While Gauthami's thread is interesting it has been stretched beyond a point and the talk about Saree's etc are unwarranted. But one scene involving Gauthami is funny when she goes to Koti to save Rs 400 and ends up spending more than that from her purse. The typical middle-class situation is portrayed funnily.

The thread of Abhi (played Vishwanth) and his romance with Anisha Amrose gives you feel of déjà vu.

While the movie is laced with emotional scenes, all these are stored in the second half. The first half of the movie is not that convincing though it sets up the mood. On the downside, the film is excruciatingly slow.

Despite these minor flaws, "Manamantha" is one of the best made emotional dramas in the recent times in Tollywood. Director Chandrasekhar Yeleti has proved again that he is a director with a different approach.

All in all, watch the film for its emotional content, good and earnest scenes and superb performances from the lead actors.

The story of this movie is really great . It is about a typical middle-class family . In the walk of life , the family has to face a lot of troubles . But they understood the meaning of happiness . Actually sometimes greed came in the minds of the family members . But understanding real happiness , they threw away all shorts of greeds and became a happy family .

Nothing to say about legendery actor Mohanlal's acting. The other casts also really did excellent work especially I have to say about the girl who played the role of the daughter of thye family. Direction was also superb.

Great movie with its split storyline. Great production quality, not a fan of the audio dubbing.. it's a bit annoying. Some areas are very noticeable.