Mad Square Review

Kalyan Shankar's 2023 campus comedy MAD was a certified blockbuster. It spun the college experience of failed romances and elaborate pranks into an absolute riot. For the sequel, we follow the MAD boys into the real world where, as Damodaran (DD) puts it, they have collectively fulfilled the promise of engineering by making zero use of the degree. Manoj (Ram Nithin) has become a bleeding-heart bartender, Ashok (Narne Nithin) is trying to be a cop, and DD (Sangeeth Shobhan) a village sarpanch. Their long-suffering classmate Laddu (Vishnu Oi) is - wonder of wonders - getting married!

Wedding flops, impromptu Goa trips and run-ins with psychotic smugglers make up the loosely strung plot of this sequel. Director Kalyan, who also scripted the film, ditches the romance tracks for a Hangover-esque situational comedy featuring an almost-exclusively male cast. Raghu Babu is back as the owner of Honeymoon Resorts, the hotel to which the MAD gang checks in after Laddu's bride elopes at the mandap. Satyam Rajesh plays a bumbling Goan cop who mistakes the MAD boys for the thieves behind a museum heist. A veteran comedian plays a surprise role as "Maxx", the leader of the smuggling ring, who kidnaps the MAD boys after his loot accidentally ends up in their hands.

Women are around, too - only if you want to count the ones in the film's multiple item songs (Priya Jawalkar and Reba Monica John), the foreign chicks frolicking on the beach in their bikinis, the prostitutes at the brothel the boys break into while wearing cop costumes, or the waitress from whom Manoj orders a "Sex On The Beach".

MAD Square still has that snappy, doesnt-miss-a-beat college humour. But it is as if the grown-ups have taken over this pants-around-the-ankles brand and made it something more plodding and heavy. The Goa scenes have a been-there seen-that quality to them. The Maxx character could have easily fit inside a mainstream commercial drama. The distinctive "boys' hostel" humour is particularly lost in the second half as the Goa cops and goons take over.

The film's best bits are still when the guys are goofing around making a mess of things, usually with Sangeeth Shobhan leading the scene. Whether it is the wedding scenes when the three boys try to cheer up Laddu after his bride runs away with a guy she has known for two days but only end up making him feel worse. Or the phone calls between the boys and Maxx filled with miscommunication. The comedy that arises when the boys sincerely attempt to do the right thing but end up worse-off, and then their total unseriousness when their schemes don't work out, lands every single time.

What makes MAD a distinctive comedy franchise is how its jokes are buffeted by its insightful observations on the complicated nature of male friendship - the teasing, bullying, pranking, but also the will-take-a-bullet-for-each-other unbreakable bond that men form, particularly in the crucible of college. The sequel doesn't show us this dynamic as well as the first film did, but it is still the big reason the jokes work.

Vishnu Oi gets the juiciest role in this film playing Laddu, the thwarted, insecure guy who wants nothing to do with his friends, but has no one else to turn to when the shit hits the fan. Strangely, though, Vishnu seems less sure of himself than he does in the first film, in which he was a breakout comedy star. Sangeeth Shobhan picks up the slack and dials up the energy of every scene with his superhuman knack for comedic timing. Ram Nithin's considerable talent gets pushed to the sidelines in lieu of an expanded role for Nithin Narne who is - cough cough - the producer's son.

Despite my earlier complaints about grown-ups in the room, I will make an exception for the exceptionally funny Muralidhar Goud who simply kills it as Laddu's beleaguered father.

MAD Square should have been twice the fun, but it not as unhinged and original as the first. It seems to have made a few compromises in a bid to become a more mainstream comedy, sacrificing its youthful step. But Kalyan Shankar's brainchild still packs plenty of punch, boasts a talented cast and a relentless stream of jokes that make it well worth your time.