Kumari Srimathi review: Nithya Menen is charming in an underwhelming family drama

Continue reading! Simply create an account on TNM. .In 2021, Nani’s Tuck Jagadish premiered on OTT platform Amazon Prime at a time when theatrical releases for big, commercial films had become unpredictable. Perhaps due to expectations of offbeat content from OTT platforms, Tuck Jagadish was mostly panned for rehashing conventional Tollywood family drama tropes in the coastal Andhra setting. Nithya Menen’s new web series Kumari Srimathi, which premiered on the same platform on September 28, is another coastal Andhra family drama starring Nithya as Itikelapudi Srimathi, a huge Nani fan, among other things. While it has many Tollywood clichés like Tuck Jagadish, the series does have one novel quality — it’s centred on a family of women who are forced to take control of their lives when the patriarch abandons them. But the novelty, more or less, begins and ends there.Directed by Gomtesh Upadhye, with a story by Balabhadrapatruni Ramani and Mallik Ram, Kumari Srimathi is written and created by actor-filmmaker Srinivas Avasarala, known for his witty comedy dramas..Nithya Menen is effervescent as the ironically named Srimathi who is single by choice at 30. She refuses to marry until she saves her ancestral property from being sold to real estate developers, as promised to her late grandfather. The only way she can do this is by buying it off from her scheming uncle. And, the only way she can think of making so much quick money, being a hotel management graduate, is by opening a bar-and-restaurant in her bar-less hometown of Ramarajulanka. Set in rural East Godavari, the show takes us through Srimathi’s struggles in opening the bar as a single woman from an all-women household in a small town. We are occasionally shown her compassionate side – she has a one-track mind but isn’t ruthless in her pursuit of money. But it feels like all of these qualities are being described to the viewers, and the writing doesn’t really evoke any visceral empathy for her. Though the complications Srimathi faces in opening the bar are shown in great detail, the plot progresses like a video game moving from one round to the next, with little focus on character development. Most of Srimathi’s problems are solved by men who show up at the right time with the right answers, which takes away from the satisfaction of watching her win. The cast includes many skilled actors who are delightful to watch, notwithstanding the poor writing. There’s Praneeta Patnaik who plays Srimathi’s younger sister Kalyani, Nirupam Paritala who plays her smitten neighbour Sriram, Thiruveer (her high school crush Abhi), Talluri Rameswari (her grandmother Seshamma), Gautami (her mother Devika), Naresh (her absent father Visweswara Rao), and Murali Mohan (her grandfather). Yet, despite the seven-episode run time, most of them come across as surface-level archetypes from coastal Andhra-based Tollywood dramas about privileged castes, and their quirks seem more expository than lived-in. .Foregrounding women in this conventional setting opens up the possibility of many fresh themes, but the show stops short of exploring any serious challenges to caste patriarchy. Sure, it would ace the Bechdel test, but we barely get to feel any sense of sisterhood or shared joy. Even the soundtrack has lyrics that sound like the broad ‘feminist’ themes of the show were hastily jotted down without much thought. Kumari Srimathi seems like an early draft of what could have been a more fleshed-out work by Srinivas Avasarala. The usual charm of the characters, the wordplay and banter are all missing – most attempts at comedy are bland and boring. The first season does end in a cliffhanger, and here’s hoping the ensemble returns with a better arc if there’s another season.

Kumari Srimathi review: Nithya Menen is charming in an underwhelming family drama

Kumari Srimathi (Telugu)(2 / 5)

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