Nara Rohith who is known for his thought provoking, hard hitting message oriented film was last seen in a powerful action entertainer Bhairavam in which he shared screen presence with Manchu Manoj and Bellamkonda Sai Sreenivas. He earlier starred in the sequel to his hit film Pratinidhi. Now he is getting ready to entertain with a different genre entertainer Sundarakanda. The film directed by newcomer Venkatesh Nimmalapudi is releasing on 27 Aug 2025 on Vinayaka Chavithi. Sundarakanda OTT rights have been bagged for a fancy sum by Jio Hotstar. Let us see how Nara Rohith entertained viewers with this film.
Sundarakanda story revolves around a youngster whose marraige gets delayed due to his likes and dislikes and what future got in store for him. The marriage of Siddharth (Nara Rohit) gets delayed as he looks for five qualities to finalise his better half and rejects even if they fail to match even one of them.
When everyone loses hope, he comes across a beautiful girl Eira (Vriti Vaghani). When he finally manages to impress Eira, he gets a shock of his life in form of Eira's mother Vaishnavi (Sridevi Vijaykumar). To finout what are Siddharth's five conditions, what it got to do with Eira's mother Sridevi, what role Siddharth's parents Surendra (Sr Naresh), Lakshmi (Rupa Lakshmi), his friend Satya (Satya), Shiva (Ajay), Vaishnavi's father (VTV.Ganesh) play form the rest of the narration.
Nara Rohit shed few kilos for his role. He is impressive with his performance. He came up with good body language and screen presence and delivered dialogues aptly according to the situation. He emoted well and showed good expressions according to the situation. He made his presence felt be it comedy, emotion or romantic scenes.
Vriti Vaghani performed well and played a perfect fiddle to Nara Rohit. She looked good and emoted as per the situation. She delivered dialogues accordingly. Sridevi Vijaykumar on her comeback, got a good role and she looked glamorous on the screen. She proved with her looks, that she still got that spark that endeared herself to all during her heyday. She made an impact with her screenpresence and delivered good dialogues with powerful expressions and emotions.
Satya carried the film on his shoulders. Whenever the pace dipped or the narration drifted, he with his comedy and hilarious antics evoked laughs to catch the attention of the viewers. Naresh played the role tailor made for him and he impressed with his performance and dialogues.
Others like Vasuki Anand, Ajay, VTV Ganesh, Abhinav Gomatham, Viswant, Rupa Lakshmi, Sunaina, Raghu Babu, Amrutham Vasu, Adhurs Raghu played their part in carrying the narration forward.
Sundarakanda story is written by Venkatesh Nimmalapudi. He tried to touch up an interesting point in the love story and he starts the narration in a predictable way with the overaged hero trying to find his soulmate and the developments in the process through his friends and family members.
The entire first half is spent on how hero tries to find his lady love as per his liking and how his sister and friends try to help him and these scenes involve routine comedy elements. But they are turned lively mostly due to the energetic performance from Satya. Only during the interval bang, viewers get interested with the main twist in the plot.
This sets the tone to the second half. With the director diving into the main plot, the narration assumes a serious tone and comedy takes a backseat. However the emotional scenes and few powerful and thought provoking dialogues appeal to viewers. Finally the film ends on a convincing note. For all the positives, the narration and screenplay treads at a snail's pace and at times, the illogical and artificial scenes diluted the tone and tenor.
Director has taken few cinematic liberties and with the screenplay turning uni dimensional and uneven, interest levels take a roller coster ride. However, Venkatesh Nimmalapudi should be complimented for touching a controversial topic and at the same time, ensuring that he doesn't ruffle the wrong side by doing a decent job on debut.
Cinematography of Pradeesh M Varma beautified the film. He showed the locations in Vizag in an appealing manner and turned the scenes colorful. Leon James with his background music took the viewers into the story and ensured that they are engrossed most of the time. He came up with youthful tunes and the songs are shot in a beautiful way. However at times, the songs placement impacted the narration. Editing of Rohan Chillale is ok but could have been better in both halves as there are many repetitive and unwanted scenes. Dialogues are at times hilarious, at times powerful and hardhitting and thoughtprovoking adding value to the narration. Production values are good.
Altogether, Sundarakanda turns out to be different romantic entertainer. Nara Rohit came up with a spirited and matured performance. Director Venkatesh Nimmalapudi on debut tried to touch the different and unique point in the love story and to that extent he succeeded. He raised few valid points in form of dialogues and powerful emotional scenes. However, uneven screenplay and illogical scenes played the spoilsport along with the slow narration. A little finetuning of the script and the story woud have turned the film's output more impactful. Considering all these aspects, Cinejosh goes with a 2.75 rating for Sundarakanda.