DMK stooge actor and husband of Cockroach Party supporter, Jyotika has once again achieved success in creating a disaster film. This time it is Vishwanath & Sons which released on 14 August 2026.
Venky Atluri’s film arrives after a string of flops that has defined much of Suriya’s recent career, a run that May’s Karuppu briefly appeared to interrupt. On paper, Vishwanath & Sons had all the ingredients for an easy watch: Mamitha Baiju as the heroine, GV Prakash handling the music and a director who has delivered back-to-back successes in Telugu. Instead, it becomes a bloated family drama that wastes a decent premise on pointless scenes while skipping the ones that actually matter.
A Thin Story Stretched Too Far
The story is simple. Sanjay Vishwanath (Suriya), a wealthy industrialist and pistol shooter who dislikes marriage, has a child through surrogacy to please his mother. The baby then falls dangerously ill, and only the surrogate Maddy (Mamitha Baiju), a medical student in the US, can save him through a bone marrow donation.
That’s essentially the entire plot, and the ending is obvious within the first few minutes. A predictable story like this needed a tight screenplay. Instead, the film keeps adding unnecessary material.
The surrogacy setup itself is poorly explained. Maddy is a random woman who agrees to be a surrogate, but the film establishes that she provides the egg and carries the baby, making her the child’s biological mother. Since there is no sexual relationship with the father, the pregnancy would have to be created through assisted reproduction. That makes her potential bone marrow match plausible, but the film never clearly explains this arrangement. It simply bends the logic to make the twist work.
Sanjay’s character is similarly overloaded. He is simultaneously a champion shooter, hands-on industrialist and wealthy businessman, three identities packed into one character without much effort to make them fit.
Filler Scenes And Forced “Mass” Moments
The film is also filled with scenes that could be removed without affecting the story.
An early sequence establishing Sanjay as a champion shooter serves no purpose, since this is not an action film. A five-star hotel fight exists purely to create a “mass hero” moment, complete with a stranger insulting Sanjay before conveniently discovering that he owns the hotel – a tired trick better suited to a TV serial.
Large portions are spent showing Sanjay trying to win over his stepsister’s prospective in-laws and dealing with his stepmother’s family. None of this adds much to the central story. Even the stepsister’s wedding becomes an excuse for Sanjay to beat up a gang of thugs, simply to remind the audience that he can still throw a punch.
The Baby Is Reduced To A Prop
This is where the film fails most badly. It is supposed to be a story about a child and two people who, reluctantly, become his parents. Instead, the baby is treated more like a prop, disappearing for long stretches while the family discusses him with as much emotion as they would a car needing repairs.
When the child falls seriously ill, there is little real panic or grief from either parent. There is no scene that makes the audience feel what a father or an unwilling mother would experience watching their child suffer.
In scenes where he is shown driving a car, he doesn’t wear a seatbelt or take even basic safety precautions for the baby.
Mamitha Baiju’s character also disappears for long stretches of the second half. The film seems more interested in lavish sets, pretty hill-station views and women dressed in full jewellery and makeup at dawn than in the relationships at its centre.
Marriage, Age And Character Arcs Don’t Add Up
The film’s ideas about marriage and age are just as confused. Sanjay’s fear of marriage comes from his father leaving his mother for a much younger woman. Yet Sanjay himself is shown sleeping around during his monthly trips abroad, presented as harmless bachelor behaviour despite being similar to what he supposedly despises in his father.
The contradiction becomes even more obvious when the film spends its second half pushing Sanjay towards Maddy, who is roughly 20 years younger than him. His family happily supports the match, and the film never addresses the obvious irony.
Maddy’s character is equally inconsistent. She is introduced as an ambitious woman who wants to travel and marry on her own terms, and who becomes a surrogate for money to ‘pay off her debt’. Then, with little transition, she becomes deeply attached to the baby and begins claiming him as her own. It feels less like character development and more like the film reaching for an easy “amma” moment.
A Film More Interested In Grandness Than Emotion
The film starts weakly, slips into old-fashioned melodrama, predictable writing and conflicts that are resolved too quickly. The music is forgettable, while the editing fails to remove the unnecessary material in the second half.
Mamitha Baiju’s ‘comic’ performance is cringe and exaggerated, relying on the familiar “scatterbrained girl” template. Even a line about relationships delivered by Raveena Tandon feels preachy and out of place.
The casting also throws up an odd detail. Sarvadaman Banerjee plays Raveena Tandon’s father, while Raveena, 53, plays the stepmother of Suriya, who is 51 in real life. It is a small detail, but it fits a film that repeatedly fails to think through its biological, medical and generational logic.
Suriya’s acting is even more cringeworthy trying to show himself as a multi-talented person who is also rich, who is also kind, who is also someone who can bash up goons – too tiring and pukeworthy.
Vishwanath & Sons pads itself on a random ‘family’ theme with unnecessary fights, a rushed romance and songs that don’t land. Atluri chose the louder, emptier version.
DMK Stooge Suriya Delivers Another Dud
None of this should come as a surprise. Suriya has spent much of the past decade as a DMK stooge, from backing the party’s position on NEET to opposing the National Education Policy in language similar to its own spokespersons. His wife Jyotika has followed a similar political line, publicly backing the Cockroach Party’s protests inciting youth to hit the streets.
For a star who has invested so heavily in projecting a political image, Suriya seems to have lost sight of something more basic: telling a good story.
And this is hardly new. Long before his political positioning became part of his public image, his filmography had its share of traumatically unforgettable films. Vishwanath & Sons is not a comeback from that phase, it is an addition to the flop register.
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