Donga Naa Koduku Movie Review: Mouli’s Crime Comedy Misses the Mark

Donga Naa Koduku Movie Review: Mouli’s Crime Comedy Misses the Mark

Our rating: 2 out of 5 ★★☆☆☆

Mouli Tanuj Prashanth won a lot of love with Little Hearts. It was his first film as a lead actor, and his easy comic timing did most of the work. Donga Naa Koduku (DNK) is his second film as a lead, and it shows how hard a follow-up can be. The film released in theatres on 13 November 2026. The idea is fine. The laughs are not.

Eeshwar (Mouli) is a youngster from Vizag. He is an engineering dropout who spends his days on betting apps and borrowing money from everyone around him. When the debts pile up, he gets pulled into a robbery, a jewellery heist that goes wrong. His girlfriend and his parents keep paying the price for his careless ways. That is the setup. It could have been fun, but the film keeps reaching for the same loud jokes, and they stop working very early.

What works

Mouli is still the best thing in the film. His timing lands in a few scenes, mostly with Babloo, and the interval twist does wake the story up for a while. One Instagram review even calls the Jai Krishna scenes in the second half a major highlight. Sushmitha Shetty, the female lead, looks confident on screen in her debut. The supporting cast, Ali, Raghu Babu and Rajitha, try their best with what they are given.

What does not work

The comedy is the problem. It is forced, loud and full of double-meaning lines. After a point, it stops being funny and starts feeling tiring. The writing is weak, the second half slips badly, and the screenplay keeps adding twists that do not land. The love track is routine, scenes stretch far beyond their need, and the background score is too loud. Sushmitha gets very little screen time, and the climax has no punch.

What others are saying

The critics are mostly on the same page. TeluguBulletin gave it 1.75/5 and wrote that it “starts as an interesting crime-comedy but fails to translate it into an engaging entertainer”. TeluguCinema gave 2/5, calling it a film “weighed down by excessive double-meaning dialogues and crass humour”. Cinema Express said it has “a decent idea and some good twists, but the execution lets the film down”. Siasat gave 2.5/5 and called the loud background score “one of the major disappointments”.

The review you shared here says it even more plainly. An Instagram review (CineLoaded, 1.5/5) calls it “a tiresome crime comedy that irritates to the core”. Nine critics together average 2.14/5. The softer voices are on Instagram too, most of them at 2.5/5, calling it a “passable watch” and a “decent one-time watch”. Viewers on NetTV4U rate it 3.32/5, kinder than the critics, but they are the exception.

Film details

Critic ratings

Final word

Donga Naa Koduku wants to be a light crime comedy, and Mouli works hard to carry it. But the jokes are forced, the writing is weak, and the second half drags. Watch it only if you are a big Mouli fan. For everyone else, skip it in theatres. Our rating is 2 out of 5.

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