I hated Vishwanath & Sons. I hated hated hated Vishwanath & Sons. I hated Vishwanath & Sons with such passion that I wanted to delete it from the Netflix library (where it's streaming) and wipe out all its reels or digital copies. It's not merely that Vishwanath & Sons is a bad movie. It's a horrendous commercial project that wants to finger both sides: that is, both the progressive liberals and the conservative armies. In so doing, director Venky Atluri ends up with a shoddy family film that leans a little too hard towards the close-minded conservatives. I don't personally know Atluri, but based on Vishwanath & Sons, he seems to have at least one open-minded, forward-looking bone in his body. This is why he touches on topics like surrogacy, age-gap romance, extramarital affairs, and the reluctance of career-focused individuals to get married. However, there is another side of Atluri that fears completely departing from the traditional norms of society, so he couches his so-called progressiveness with dated tropes, inane comedy, and narrative twists that alter the DNA of his "modern spirit."
Here is an example: Sanjay Vishwanath (Suriya), a wealthy industrialist and a shooter who wins the gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics, ignores his mother Nirmala Devi's (Radikaa Sarathkumar) pleas to get married. What could be the reason? Well, based on the evidence on the screen, one deduces that Sanjay wants to spend his energy on his career and achieve more great things, like winning gold medals at the Olympics, in his life. A busy, ambitious man like Sanjay should definitely not start a family. He should be climbing the Everest of excellence rather than settling for mediocrity. In that respect, Nirmala emerges as the definite villain of the story. She also exposes the flaw that exists in many Indian parents: their—and let me be blunt—stupid, annoying nagging about marrying off their kids. Here is a man who runs a successful business and wins an Olympic gold medal, and all his mother can think of is tying him to a woman for the rest of his life. Why, then, does she get all embarrassed after finding condoms in Sanjay's bag? By constantly telling him to get "settled," isn't she, albeit indirectly, telling her son to find a woman and have sex with her just so that she can spend her remaining days playing with a baby? Isn't she kind of selfish? No wonder Nirmala never reacts to or talks about Sanjay's business achievements and Olympic win with the sort of pride and happiness that she brings to the subject of his wedding. We see Mamitha Baiju's Maddy Jay, the love interest of Sanjay, providing more joy to Nirmala than any of Sanjay's professional achievements in the film.
But then, Atluri brings in a twist that offers clarity on Sanjay's aversion to matrimony. His father, Vijay (Rajiv Menon), had an affair with another woman named Anjali (Raveena Tandon) and explained himself to a young Sanjay by saying that love for your spouse deteriorates over time, which leads men to find love in the arms of other women. He, of course, is speaking not about love but libido, but Sanjay is inexperienced enough to counter his dad, though he is angry enough to take a vow then and there that he will never repeat Vijay's mistake by binding himself in a nuptial promise. So Sanjay is not a careerist after all. He is simply upholding a foolish vow that he made out of too much anger and too little logic. Why foolish? Because Sanjay basically thinks, "My father destroyed the family through marriage, so I will protect myself by refusing marriage." The problem with this line of thinking is that Sanjay still allows his father's mistake to dictate his life. This creates a crack in the film's supposedly progressive facade by giving the narrow-minded conservatives an opportunity to make statements like, "See, Sanjay is not wise to refuse to acknowledge his mother's pleas."
I think I should clarify myself more strongly by asserting that I am not trying to speak against weddings. What I am against is the frustrating line of orthodox logic that you cannot be fulfilled unless you find a wife, that professional achievements pale in front of a "happy, married life with kids." Even in this respect, Atluri nudges towards the traditionalists by establishing Sanjay's rifle-shooting skills and gold-medal-winning ambitions as a product of his parents' dreams. As a kid, he just shot a bottle with a plastic gun while playing, and his father and mother instilled in him their desire to have their son win at the Olympics. No wonder Sanjay doesn't look especially ecstatic after attaining victory during the opening scene. He simply looks...fine. And there is nothing in the movie that suggests that Sanjay loves working in his office (he just looks busy). This is why this businessman seems a little empty from within—an emptiness that Suriya brings out with a face that has shades of slight fatigue.
Atluri, in other words, strengthens the claim that you need a partner to add spice to your life. And he doesn't stop at Suriya's performance; he introduces Maddy into the mix, whom Baiju plays with her usual peppiness that can infuse vigor into a dead body. "Look how lively the surroundings become with a partner who takes care of your house and flirts with you constantly," says the movie. Maddy might have initially been brought in as a party-throwing, thrill-seeking medical student who studies to be a doctor, but she changes gears and adopts the role of a domestic, man-pleasing housewife after meeting Sanjay and falling in love with him. She says she is ready to drop out of college to take care of the child, and Nirmala beholds her with a lovely smile. That smile is the smile of all the conservatives who prefer a homely bride. By sacrificing her career, by adopting the role of a full-time mommy, by being a girl who has fun with her lover's mommy, Baiju's Maddy becomes a wet dream for all the conventionalists. Even when Sanjay essentially forces her to complete her studies, she looks discontented with her student life and misses Sanjay terribly.
What about the age-gap romance? Atluri tiptoes around the subject with a shy grin. He refuses to take a firm stand on the topic—he clearly lacks a spine. Maddy asks Sanjay whether he would have married her if she were the same age as him, and Sanjay simply...smiles. That smile is also Atluri's smile. He acknowledges the viewpoints of the liberals with a wink but chooses to go to bed with the close-minded sections of society. This is why Vishwanath & Sons, after a while, becomes all about pleasing the egos of family members and distant relatives (one uncle is pissed that no one tries to convince him about the official union of a relationship). The film's narrow-minded, style-challenged, unremarkable, crowd-pleasing filmmaking starts to make more sense if we view it as a commercial calculation: the conservative audience is likely to have greater cultural and box-office power than the progressive one, so by appealing to its opinions, Atluri secures a better chance of a hit at the box office. At the same time, by throwing allusions and minor indications towards people with modern perspectives, he casts a wider net and reels in more viewers. His final objective, then, appears to be commercial rather than ideological, which is why Vishwanath & Sons is so scattershot in its politics. Its ideologies are all mixed up; it's the result of a confused, people-pleasing mind. Wikipedia tells me that the movie "emerged as the third highest-grossing Tamil film of 2026." After all this analysis, I can't say I am surprised.
Written by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times