JOIN OUR WHATSAPP CHANNEL
Vivaha Bhojanambu Movie Review: A good premise gets marred by directionless screenplay
The film, in general, makes us pray for the lockdown to end so that the boring relatives can leave Mahesh's place and end the ordeal called 'Vivaha Bhojanambu'.
Title: Vivaha Bhojanambu
Cast: Satya, Aarjavee, Srikanth Iyengar and others
Director: Ram Abbaraju
Rating: 2/5
'Vivaha Bhojanambu' is one of the early Telugu films that is set in the time of the pandemic. It's the early days of the coronavirus pandemic when the penny-pincher Mahesh (Satya) has to go for a humble wedding, much to his glee. As fate would have it, an unexpected nationwide lockdown puts him in a soup when he has to host his in-laws and their many relatives for days on end at a huge monetary burden. But the real issue is something else: the father-in-law (played by Srikanth Iyengar) is disgusted with Mahesh, who is not rich as him, who is not good-looking as his daughter (Aarjavee as Anitha), and who is not a businessman. Mahesh is an idiosyncratic LIC agent who is salivating at the prospect of Covid-19 forcing people to take life insurance policies so that he can earn a few thousands more.
Writer-director Ram Abbaraju comes equipped with a peculiar premise. Although the Telugu audience has seen hilarious misers (played by first-rate actors such as Rajendra Prasad and Kota Srinivas Rao) before, Satya manages to make the film look like a one-man show at least till the first half. He is brilliant as a mildly naive and extremely dim-witted son-in-law who is plain lucky.
By and by, the film progressively becomes generic. Some forty minutes or so into the story, it's no longer about the stinginess of the male protagonist. The situations become non-specific, the screenplay loses its direction, the madcap humour gives way to an uninspiring gag fest wherein Covid-19 jokes replace the substantive part of the story for a good amount of screen-time. The comedy loses the fizz, and the very many characters are condemned to repeat the same expressions. Late TNR is enjoyable, but the absence of a funny young male in the bride's camp is a glaring flaw.
If Satya's modulations are enjoyable, the rest of them just tire you out. Srikanth Iyengar, otherwise a watchable actor, is one-note. The female lead becomes a footnote, so much so, you wonder if she is a stranger hired to act as a wife. In an outdated climax that is marred by a convenient trope belonging to another era, she looks so unsentimental that even a medical counseller would sound more invested and emotional in her client's life.
The film becomes so repetitive that if you talk about a few jokes, you would be ending up revealing the entire story. In any case, some of the jokes are unoriginal (the likening of Narendra Modi giving tasks to the nation during the March-April 2020 lockdown to the Bigg Boss assigning tasks in the reality show, is just an example). And where they work, it is only because of Satya's impeccable timing.
The skin-deep comedy becomes Sundeep Kishan-indulging farce when the actor enters the screen as Nellore Prabha. For a film that lacks an emotional arc, ironically, it is this guest character who has an emotional arc (albeit a farcical one) of his own. The comedy in the second half is decisively unbearable.
There comes a revelation about Mahesh a good 30 minutes or so into the second half. Had this been the interval point, the conflict plot point would have existed at least on paper.
Casting Subbaraya Sharma, an actor who is well past his sell-by date, reveals the film's lack of interest to know what the audience wants. Comedian Sudarshan and 'Amrutham' fame Shivannarayana prove their worth. The film, in general, makes us pray for the lockdown to end so that the boring relatives can leave Mahesh's place and end the ordeal called 'Vivaha Bhojanambu'.
