Vishwanath and Sons: Suriya delivers an RRR — reverse-Raanjhanaa ragebait

Suriya's ‘family entertainer’ Vishwanath & Sons unintentionally romanticises unhealthy obsession love and regressive gender roles.

Family entertainers have become a rare breed in both South and Hindi cinema. So, whenever you come across one, it feels almost regrettable to let it pass, more so when your beloved star is returning to a forgotten genre after nearly two decades. With this thought, I went to watch Suriya's Vishwanath & Sons, and aptly, with the whole family. The film delivered, too—the laughs, the nostalgia, the drama, and the unbridled love and disappointment that only family can give you.

Suriya and Mamitha Baiju play lead roles in Vishwanath and Sons.

Family entertainers = Excuse to laugh at prejudice

But as I watched this 'family entertainer', I also realised how these films can sometimes become an excuse to package everything that is wrong with society as harmless fun. The audience is expected to accept it because, what else can a family laugh together at if not prejudice, male ego and unhealthy, obsessive love? In doing so, such films only end up reconfirming the very age-old notions they should be questioning.

While Vishwanath & Sons has many problems, starting with its very title, which suggests that only a son can carry forward a family's legacy, the film's protagonist Sanjay, played by Suriya, is the most eligible bachelor in town. And since he wants to remain one, he gets himself a son through surrogacy to stop his nagging mother from forcing him to get married and give the family and its business 'a varis'.

The reverse-Raanjhanaa syndrome

Because of a twist of fate and a medical emergency, young NRI surrogate mother Maddy (Mamitha Baiju) ends up living under the same roof as Sanjay (Suriya), his son and his mother for months. And, as these things go in films, she inevitably falls in love with Sanjay. But what begins as love soon veers into obsession — and that's where things start getting uncomfortable.

Maddy is in her early 20s and has chosen surrogacy to fund the final year of her medical education in the US. An orphan who lost both her doctor parents, she dreams of carrying their legacy forward and becoming a doctor herself. It is a solid, convincing backstory. Which makes what follows all the more baffling. The moment Maddy falls Sanjay (a billionaire), her ambitions, career and carefully built identity seemingly take a back seat. For a film that gives her such a promising character arc, watching her abandon it all for love feels neither convincing nor particularly progressive.

Then there is the 20-year age gap between Sanjay and Maddy. Sanjay, a man in his 40s, spends much of the film running away from her advances and making it clear that he isn't comfortable being with a much younger woman. Maddy, however, refuses to take no for an answer. She follows him around, pursues him relentlessly and, at one point, even stages a dharna outside his house. Somewhere along the way, she forgets about her dignity — and, seemingly, the medical degree that she once cared for so deeply.

It is difficult not to think of Dhanush's Raanjhanaa, which sparked conversations about how films often romanticise stalking and obsessive love. Now imagine the genders were reversed. What if Sanjay were the one relentlessly pursuing Maddy, refusing to accept her rejection and pulling these same stunts until she agreed to marry him? Creepy, right? The uncomfortable truth is that the film's framing makes Maddy's behaviour seem far more acceptable simply because she is a woman. And that is where Vishwanath & Sons slips into the reverse-Raanjhanaa syndrome.

Raveena Tandon's character, who plays a pivotal role in the story, takes this even further with a particularly troubling line that roughly goes, "If a woman wants to marry you, she will marry you, and you will have little control over it." PS: Raveena plays Sanjay's father's second wife. So, you decide.

And then there is Sanjay's mother, who accepts her husband's affair and second marriage for the sake of the family. The film treats her sacrifice as part of the larger family equation. Perhaps that is the biggest irony of this 'family entertainer': it wants the family to laugh together, but at whose expense?