Nam Naani Maduve Prasanga review: Hemanth Hegde’s comedy is a passable watch

2.5/5

Story: Naani (Hemanth Hegde), a 37-year-old agriculturist, has been unable to find a soulmate despite his mother’s best efforts. Considering his age and that he’s ‘seen’ a fair share of prospective brides already, yet remains a bachelor, he has become the butt of jokes in the small-town he’s from. To pacify his mother Radha (Padmaja Rao), Naani devises a plan to hoodwink her into believing that there’s a girl out there for him after all. But just when it all falls in place, two other girls arrive staking claim on Naani. What makes Naani the most eligible bachelor suddenly?

Review: When actor-filmmaker Hemanth Hegde first spoke about his new film, Nam Naani Madve Prasanga, the subject not only seemed interesting, but pertinent too. Hemanth’s film would tackle the issue of young men from agricultural backgrounds being unable to find suitable brides. Girls, he had said, would not want to get married and settle for a life in a village/small town, while those from those areas preferred boys from cities. A comedy about this conundrum – that’s how he’d described his film.

The problem with Nam Naani Madve Prasanga, though, is that it doesn’t take long for this premise to become a footnote, with the focus then on the comedy of errors brought upon by the sudden abundance of women in the protagonist’s life. The fact that both of Naani’s sisters are married to men who are not farmers, and live in the city, and a fleeting mention of the undesirability of men in the agrarian sector is all that the ‘central’ theme gets.

Thereon, it becomes about the women in Naani’s life – Naaz aka Swathi (Shruti Nandeesh), a small-time artiste, who has been paid to pretend to have an interest in him and have a ‘fake’ engagement too; Priya (Shreya Vasanth), a commercial sex worker, who’d got Naani to put a mangalsutra on her to get him to be more ‘comfortable’ with her, which she has filmed and uses to stake claim to her husband, and Niharika (Gitanjali Mangal), the daughter of an industrialist, who needs a ‘well-behaved husband from an agricultural background’ to receive a Rs 30 crore inheritance from her late grandfather. What happens when all three women land at Naani’s household at the same time forms the crux of the narrative.

But then, if you are hoping to find an answer as to if and how Naani solves this problem, well, that’s not going to happen. Multiple instalments to tell one story has become fashionable and Hemanth follows suit, ending his film with a ‘twist’, with all the answers set to come in a potential second part.

Nam Naani Maduve Prasanga is a comedy, with the jokes a mix of hits and misses. For the most part, the humour is subtle and conversational and works, but there are a few that feel forced and don’t have much of an impact, like the scene of Naani going to buy a bull, and the one with his devotional CDs. The casting is quite on point, with everyone doing justice to their roles, especially Madhu Hegde and Rajesh Nataranga. A pet peeve that I had was in terms of continuity, which becomes glaringly evident in the number of costume changes that Shreya has in what appears to be a span of only hours in the narrative, as well as the amount of white/grey sprayed into Padmaja’s otherwise jet-black hair.

Verdict: Nam Naani Maduve Prasanga is not groundbreaking cinema, but it isn’t bad either. If you can overlook a few flaws here and there, it makes for a ‘timepass’ watch. It should have just been one film with a crisper narrative.