Mahesh Babu’s son Gautham gives Nani’s The Paradise one star: ‘the editing was just atrocious’

Gautham Ghattamaneni, the son of Mahesh Babu, has given Nani’s The Paradise one star out of five, and the two-line verdict has travelled far beyond the film-logging site where he posted it. His Letterboxd account became public only recently and is linked from his Instagram bio, which is how the rating was found and shared.

“I liked the cinematography and the acting in emotional scenes,” he wrote. “I liked nothing else. Very disappointing.” The editing, he added, was “just atrocious”. Gautham, the elder child of Mahesh Babu and Namrata Shirodkar, appeared as a boy in his father’s film 1: Nenokkadine.

Old ratings dug up

Once the one star became news, the rest of his diary was read closely. He gave Yash’s Toxic half a star. Some of his father’s films got two stars from him. That record has split the online response. One camp says the ratings prove he scores films without fear or favour. The other says a star’s son should not have handed a Nani film its lowest mark in public.

After the coverage began, Gautham removed the Letterboxd link from his bio and then restored it with a short note: “Welcome to this apparently national news worthy page. I will try to live up to that,” followed by a crying emoji and a V-sign.

The film and its reception

The Paradise, directed by Srikanth Odela, is an action drama about a community’s fight to survive in 1980s Secunderabad. Mohan Babu, Kayadu Lohar, Sonali Kulkarni and Raghav Juyal appear alongside Nani. A month after its theatrical run began, the film has streamed on Netflix in five languages since Thursday, 22 October, which is when the new round of comment started.

The divided response is not new. In a post-release conversation put out by the production house, Nani said he had expected strong reactions but “didn’t expect so many contrasting reactions on Twitter and Instagram”. He promised that the next film from the pair “will be celebrated even by people who didn’t like this”. Odela said he still needed time to process the mixed reception. On Gautham’s one star, Nani, Odela and the producers had said nothing by Sunday evening.