Most Eligible Bachelor Movie Review: The romance is boring, the comedy is forgettable
Most Eligible Bachelor Movie Review: The romance is boring, the comedy is forgettable

Most Eligible Bachelor Movie Review: The romance is boring, the comedy is forgettable 

This Akhil Akkineni-Pooja Hegde starrer has its heart in the right place but that doesn't compensate for its shoddy narration
Rating:(2 / 5)

Bommarillu Bhaskar’s Most Eligible Bachelor, through most of its second half, feels like a spin-off to the filmmaker’s Orange. The 2010 film followed its protagonist Ram (Ram Charan), who believes he is the greatest lover in the world. He goes on a trial to prove his idea of love, which seems to defy the generally accepted relationship norms, to Jaanu (Genelia). Towards the end, he realises that his understanding of love has been convoluted all the while. Replace Ram’s terribly misunderstood beliefs about love with marriage and you have Harsha (Akhil Akkineni), the protagonist of Most Eligible Bachelor.  

Director:  Bommarillu Bhaskar
Cast: Akhil Akkineni, Pooja Hegde, Murali Sharma, Vennela Kishore

We are introduced to Harsha as someone with utmost clarity about his life partner, but his belief system is shattered when he meets Vibha, played by Pooja Hegde. Now, Vibha’s beliefs about marriage contrast Harsha’s, and the film is all about how they feed off each other’s understanding of what makes a successful marriage. In a way, Vibha does to Harsha what Ram tries to do to Jaanu in Orange. It’s a terrific premise but Most Eligible Bachelor fails to form a memorable film from it, mostly attributed to the lack of novelty in how scenes play out. Every character apart from the leads are cardboard cutouts, the wit falls flat (even Vennela Kishore fails to leave a mark), and the performances are, well, functional.

 

Harsha leads a sorted life in the US; he has a house and a well-paying job, which he deems to be the eligibility to get married. He comes down to India to get married, but here’s the catch: he’s yet to find the bride. Confident about his judgments and what he expects from his wife, Harsha and his family start hunting for brides -- Eesha Rebba, Fariah Abdulla, and Saanve Meghana are wasted in feeble characters. After Harsha instantly falls for Vibha, a stand-up comedian who uses the medium to deliver long, unfunny monologues about marriage, she begins to influence his choices and understandings of the entire concept of marriage. 

Do you remember the comedy scene in Dil, where Venu Madhav’s character manages to borrow answers for the questions being asked in an interview and ends up giving the same answers even when the questions are changed? That’s precisely what the proceedings and their consequences in the first half of this film reminded me of when Harsha begins to expect the same from his prospective brides. It felt like a silly joke fetched too far. And when this angle is later given a serious twist to illustrate the protagonist’s indecisiveness, it feels force-fit. And then there's a scene where Harsha seals a corporate deal while playing indoor football with a young executive, who then immediately wants to get married to him. You get the idea of the film's writing, right?

Inconsistency is the film’s innate trait. It’s masqueraded as the transformation these characters go through, but the trajectory of Vibha feels heavily inorganic. While I appreciate the idea of role-reversal of the lead characters (and how they help each other) in the second half, it’s shoddily done. Moreover, their relationship, which banks on anonymity, is borderline creepy. However, Pooja Hegde's performance, well, let's say, presence, keeps things light and humane, and it is certainly the meatiest role she has played so far. 

When it’s not trying to be a shoddy examination of relationships or preaching to us about the vitality of emotions in keeping a relationship afloat, Most Eligible Bachelor sticks to the typical troupes to keep us engaged. We have the friends of the lead trying hard to invoke laughter, a slap here and there, and probably an angle that seems to work: the cat and mouse banter between Harsha and Vibha’s father, played by Murali Sharma. Most Eligible Bachelor holds its intentions in high regard and in the process, ends up being a tiring watch. 

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