Eddelu Manjunatha was released on 17 July 2009 to positive reviews from critics and achieved cult status in Kannada cinema.

His laziness is portrayed in the film as not a quality but as an ethic imbibed within his general thoughts and notions of the everyday world that surrounds him.

Through his formative years, his thinking becomes pragmatic in considering that livelihood can always be sought through alternate sources rather than being a puppet to how the world goes about through linear methods of gaining success and money.

The film is structured around the lengthy conversation, which happens in a captive lodge room, between Manja and Naani where each depicts their ideologies and experiences and co-relate their thoughts.

Gowri struggles to save her relationship while Manja is doused into the casual habits of alcohol, his influential "circle" of friends, betting, occasional petty thieving at random jobs, inability to sustain decent jobs, wife-bitching and other habits including schemes that eventually thicken the gap between living a moral and meaningful life and being an incapable disloyal husband.

However, Gowri's character is portrayed to be that of a devout woman who honours the capacity of having a more healthy family life, through her husband changing his ways someday or the other.

After celebrating their freedom from the lodge with alcoholism that night they find themselves captive within the house with the help of the local inspector who assists Gowri tackle Manja's unyielding ways.

Manja, hearing the simple story of Dr Rajkumar's pledged eyes and how they were now seeing a world through another person, is taken aback and applauds Naani for such a heartwarming plot and how the -Annavru-'s fans would welcome such a movie.

He also happens to find a note in the cupboard that Gowri leaves behind (after her inability to tell him personally that night due to his inebriated state) to Manja conveying that she was now pregnant and that he would soon become a father.

R G Vijayasarathy of Rediff wrote "Guru Prasad hits bull's eye once again with a perfect film in Eddelu Manjunatha.