Jai Mahendran Review | A Stretched-Out Mediocre Office Comedy With Predictable Beats

If you look at how our Government offices function, from a creative point of view, that’s a premise for a web series with multiple seasons because of the ethical conflicts, inner politics, union tussles, etc. Rahul Riji Nair, who is the writer and showrunner of the latest SonyLIV original series Jai Mahendran, is actually trying to tap into the possibility of making a TVF-ish comedy. But rather than developing something around a core concept, Jai Mahendran feels like an idea that stretches a basic thread so much that the fun element drains out.

Mahendran is the deputy tahsildar, and he is part of the union whose party is in power. He has taken advantage of the position he holds for personal benefits, and since everything was considered fair in the ecosystem, life was pretty smooth for Mahendran. But at one point, a new tahsildar, who was very righteous, took charge, and that sort of unsettled the usual workflow of Mahendran. How that leads to some other major issues in Mahendran’s life and how he tries to solve them is what we see in Jai Mahendran.

In the initial patches of the series and in the first episode, where the priority is on building the world, the series gives a sense of promise. We do get to know the ideology of the title character. But as the events proceed, they don’t have that organic feel. You can easily chop off many of the supporting characters who are there in two or three scenes. Rather than making it a compelling watch by creating exciting sequences that come as a consequence of something that already happened, Rahul is trying to create new events and characters, and it almost feels like a stretching exercise rather than developing.

Writing humor is not an easy task, and I feel finding the pitch of the humor and striking the balance is also a tough task. In a way, Jai Mahendran is a derivative of Sandesham. Like that film, director Srikanth Mohan is trying to have a balance of satiric humor and realistic human emotions. But the writing is finding it difficult to strike the right balance. When the series goes to an overtly emotional phase, we, as the audience, are not getting transported to that space. And there is this effort to project Mahendran as this mastermind who can even topple the government. But I personally couldn’t find him as that “Chanakya.” The overall production quality is superior, and since the series is on the lighter side, the visuals are mostly bright and colorful.

In terms of screen time, Saiju Kurup and the creator, Rahul Riji Nair, have the most it. Saiju Kurup has a typical style in portraying these sorts of characters, and he basically repeats that here as well. Since it matches the tone of the comedy of the series, it doesn’t really stick out. I wasn’t really a fan of Rahul Riji Nair as an actor, especially after I saw him in the film Keedam. In this series, in the first episode, I thought he sort of cracked how to do the exaggerated comedy, but as the series went ahead, his performance felt way too animated.

The character played by Suhasini is dubbed by Maala Parvathy. Considering the minimal screen time and the significance of the character, I thought they should have cast Maala Parvathy for the role. There were instances where Maala Parvathy’s efforts for lipsync were making the dialogue delivery look a bit odd. Miya, Siddhartha Siva, Anand Manmadhan, Maniyanpilla Raju, Krishnan Balakrishnan, Mahesh Nair, Sreenath Babu, Vishnu Govindan, Jeo Baby, etc., are part of the cast along with Suresh Krishna, who played the role of a tahsildar was struggling to convince the public.

Jai Mahendran is an underdeveloped comedy that has no excitement factor to its credit. Neither the story nor the humor is making us look forward to what will happen in the next episode, as the beats of this office comedy are very familiar. Because of the breezy nature, it might not feel like a test of patience, but there is pretty much nothing here for you as a viewer to go back and reminisce.