Madha Mathu Manasi movie review: A view to a kill'joy

Movie: Madha Mathu Manasi
Director: Satish Pradhan
Cast: Prajwal Devaraj, Sruthi Hariharan, Rangayana Raghu
Rating: 1 star

After his failure in bringing the tragic life of a yesteryear legendary actress alive onscreen, this director is back with a love story. Sadly, this story is killer in the literal sense! Madha Mathu Manasi definitely deserves to be on the list of stories that have killed the audience with its sappy uninteresting and somewhat ludicrous story line.

Another worrying factor is that Dynamic Prince Prajwal Devaraj, who has been a consistent performer, has again been let down by his directors. The title suggests that there is someone between Madha and Manasi as literally, mathu translates as “and” in English. Mano Murthy who scored evergreen songs for the mega hit Mungaru Male has produced this film, which is also extremely surprising, as to how the director convinced himself with such a ‘killing’ love story.

The story begins as a typical commercial build-up — a hero falls for a heroine at first sight. Wait a second, there is a flashback even before the actual love story starts to unravel! A fight or two prior to the introduction song has needless comedy sequences, and an elopement.

Soon, the hero reveals that Manasi (Sruthi) is actually in love with another boy and Madha is helping her reach her boyfriend even as her angry father is searching for her! After too much of her, there is a short story of another person whom they meet while “eloping” in the train.

After the dukh bhari kahani, the journey gets tougher as one of the villains whom Madha had fought with in the past, suddenly appears while he is away to buy train tickets to reach Manasi’s actual lover. Even more ludicrous, the story sees Manasi being raped. It seems like the director had been watching too many 70s and 80s love stories while penning this “killer” love story.

There are several heart wrenching twists. Will it be a happy ending for Madha and Manasi? I rest my case as even the music scored by Mano Murthy himself fails to lift the mood for some kind of survival of this over two-and-a-half hours debacle which is nothing but a test of one’s patience.