Mahakavya Shri Ramayan Katha Review: 2026 Ramayana Film

You know the drill - or you should, because this thing assumes you've been listening during every Diwali and Dussehra since childhood. We open in Ayodhya, where King Dasharath's court is basically a palace full of political tension. Enter Ram (Dev Sharma), the golden boy prince, and Sita (Anjali Arora), who get married in what has to be one of the more lavish wedding sequences put on screen this year. Then the twist: exile, fourteen years, forest, and a certain demon king named Ravan (Rajneesh Duggal) deciding he simply must have Sita.

From there, it's the well-trodden road - Lakshman (Sheel Verma) playing the loyal brother with varying degrees of charm, Hanuman (Nirbhay Wadhwa) arriving like a divine battering ram, and the inevitable march toward Lanka and war. If you've seen even one Ramayana adaptation, you know every beat. The question is whether Singh brings anything new to the telling, and the honest answer is: sometimes.

Let's start with what works. Rajneesh Duggal as Ravan is the film's beating heart - and yes, I know how strange that sentence is. He plays the demon king not as a cartoon villain but as a scholar-king with a bruised ego and a terrifying intellect. Every time he's on screen, the movie crackles. Dev Sharma's Ram is earnest and gentle, which is the right instinct, but he occasionally gets swallowed by the film's own bigness - the character needs a flicker of the human beneath the divine, and Sharma's version stays mostly icon.

Anjali Arora's Sita is a bright spot in the first act, all spark and dignity, but the screenplay sidelines her pretty aggressively once the abduction happens. Sheel Verma's Lakshman is fine if a bit shouty. Nirbhay Wadhwa's Hanuman, though? Pure joy. He lands the humor, the devotion, and the sheer physical presence of the character, and the audience I sat with literally cheered at his entrance.

The craft is a mixed bag. The production design and costume work are genuinely impressive - Ayodhya glows, Lanka smolders, and the color palette shifts cleverly between the two halves. But the visual effects wobble. Some set pieces look rich and lived-in; others have that distinctly rushed, Photoshop-y haze. At some point, a certain crowd of monkeys flies across the screen and, well, bless them, they tried.

Pacing is the real problem. The first half luxuriates in setup to the point of self-indulgence, and the second half rushes the war like it just remembered it had a runtime to hit. A film like this needs balance, and balance is exactly what Singh's screenplay doesn't have. There's also the dialogue, which alternates between genuinely stirring and weirdly modern - nothing takes you out of ancient Ayodhya faster than a line that sounds like it wandered in from a corporate meeting.

Still, there's something to admire here. Singh clearly loves the source material, and that affection is infectious. The devotional scenes land emotionally, and the crowd I saw it with was genuinely moved. That counts for something a review score can't fully capture.

Pros

• Rajneesh Duggal's magnetic, layered Ravan
• Nirbhay Wadhwa's Hanuman is pure crowd-pleasing charisma
• Gorgeous production design and costumes
• Genuine emotional resonance in the devotional moments

Cons

• Uneven visual effects that undercut the spectacle
• Lopsided pacing - slow first half, rushed second
• Anjali Arora's Sita gets sidelined after the first act
• Dialogue that occasionally sounds anachronistic

"Mahakavya: Shri Ramayan Katha - Shri Ram Ki" is a film made with obvious devotion and uneven execution. If you're a believer in the story, it'll hit you in the chest where it counts. If you're a skeptic, the dodgy effects and clunky pacing will keep you at arm's length. It's not the definitive Ramayana, but it's a sincere one - and in a genre this crowded, sincerity still buys you something. Catch it with a crowd; the audience energy is honestly half the experience.