The first full reviews of Ramayana: Rise of a Legend offer different verdicts: Brandon Zachary at Screen Rant awards 7/10, while Giovanni Lago at Next Best Picture gives 5/10. Both October 30 reviews discuss the film’s scale, but their judgments about how effectively it tells the story diverge. Neither rating is a combined critics’ score.

The reviews follow the October 27 world premiere in Los Angeles, reported by The Hindu/PTI on October 28, and arrive ahead of Indian theatrical screenings. BookMyShow’s Mumbai listing gives November 5 for release. For Indian readers deciding whether and how to see it, the useful evidence is what each review assessed and which version the local booking page offers.

Screen Rant, Brandon Zachary, 7/10: craft praised, character depth criticised. Next Best Picture, Giovanni Lago, 5/10: pacing and English-dub presentation criticised. Rotten Tomatoes: 5 reviews, no aggregate score yet.
Two separately credited reviews, with their own ratings and main concerns. The box below records that Rotten Tomatoes had five reviews but no aggregate or audience score at inspection. View full-size graphic ↗

The disagreement is about more than spectacle

Zachary’s review favours the film’s visual construction, action choreography and musical scale, while finding several central characters less fully developed than the spectacle around them. He sees the craft as a reason to choose a large screen, without claiming that it removes the storytelling limitations. That combination explains the positive 7/10 judgment more clearly than treating it as unqualified praise.

Lago also recognises the film’s ambition, but places more weight on pacing and the difficulty of joining its narrative strands. He specifically states that his screening was the English dub, and criticises its lip-sync presentation as well as parts of the effects. Those are his observations about that version; they cannot automatically describe the experience of watching the Hindi release. His final rating is 5/10.

Five reviews do not yet make an aggregate score

Rotten Tomatoes showed five critic reviews but “No score yet” for the Tomatometer, and no audience score when checked on October 31 IST. It therefore provides no aggregate percentage to report at this point. The two ratings above are individual judgments on their own scales, not numbers to average into an unofficial site score.

NDTV’s October 28 roundup, by contrast, collects social-media reactions after the premiere, including both enthusiastic comments and criticism of pacing and emotional impact. It is evidence of those attributed reactions, not a representative audience survey. The full reviews give reasons that can be read alongside the short reactions; neither source establishes how the wider Indian audience will respond.

Choosing the Indian screening

The Mumbai BookMyShow movie page lists a 3-hour 15-minute runtime. Selecting Book tickets opens a language-and-format choice; we followed Hindi and 2D to the November 5 showtimes page, which lists cinemas and sessions. Other formats appear in the chooser, but that does not guarantee every format at every venue. Select city, date, language and format before comparing a cinema’s sessions; no ticket price or seat availability is promised here.

For the viewing decision, the present reviews suggest a clear trade-off to examine: the attraction of a large-scale epic versus how much character depth and narrative pace matter to the viewer. That is a comparison of credited judgments, not this newsroom’s own film review. Indian audiences can pair those arguments with the actual Hindi-format booking options, while waiting for a broader review and audience sample before treating any early verdict as consensus.

Sources & context

October30 credited reviews and October31 checks of Rotten Tomatoes and Mumbai BookMyShow listings. This is a review comparison;the newsroom has not viewed the film.

AI assisted with drafting and editing. This article is part of our preview edition. Editorial standards & corrections →