Chocolate (Telugu) Review

What makes Chocolate difficult to watch is the fact that you can see exactly how the story was designed around the "the theme", which was basically to make a movie. A sequence of staged situations that somehow connect together jokes and ideas culled from the boys' bathroom at an arts college is what this small time (Tamil) moviemaker's modus operandi is in a nutshell, and criticizing him for the very thing he thrives on would seem to make little sense.

Still, the tale goes like this: Arvind (Prashant) is the hero of two colleges - VOC College and Bharathi College. No, he is not attempting a dual degree - it is just that the students of both colleges are so casual that they attend any college of their choice... now that's what I call true emancipation!

Some goons come into the VOC college campus and try to rough up a student. Arvind beats them black and blue, and then quite appropriately there is a song. Now enter Anjali (Jaya Chandran). She enters the screen with Urmila's "Kambaqt Ishq" in the background, dressed like Urmila in Rangeela, and looking like Urmila's mom in real life (I am still wondering who chose her Miss Goa).

Arvind meets Anjali and falls head over heels for her, and vice versa. And since all nice things need to come to an end, they split 'cos Anjali accuses Arvind of misbehaving with Nirmala alias Nimmi (Mumtaz).

To add to the story, Suha (Suhasini), Anjali's psycho mom estranged from her husband, is making arrangements to get her daughter married to a software engineer settled in London. She begs and convinces Arvind not to marry Anjali, reminding him of his poor economical status. Arvind, like any normal dumbo, agrees, but to boldly go where no dumbo has gone before, even agrees to help in the arrangements for the marriage. A day before the wedding, though, Suha doubts Arvind's sincerity, and poisons him to get rid of him.

The only performance worth mention is that of Suhasini as a psychopath. Prashant has evolved from being just an artificial actor to being an artificial actor with a string of films behind him. Jaya Chandran and Mumtaz add cost and footage to the movie. Jaya is in because the movie needs a heroine, and Mumtaz is in since the movie wouldn't last an hour without her "role" and her "performances".

The songs are average, but that is without including the lyrics in the calculation. The latter are either incomprehensible or raunchy or worse. And as far as the humor in the flick is concerned, it's easier to die laughing at the sight of a doorknob.

The film makes you wince so hard and so continuously that the muscles in your face might be impaired forever. For instance, there's this scene where Prashant narrates an analogy between a pair of people and a pair of chappals to convince Suhasini to go back to her husband - it gives reuniting a bad name. What beats me is, I am a reviewer, but why were there other people sitting till the end?