Darling (2024) Review

Several scenes in Aswin Raam's Darling make you squirm but one stands out. In it, Venu Yadlandi makes an appearance as Manikonda Swami, a babaji who treats men with wife problems. Venu, you may remember, is the director of the critically acclaimed film Balagam (2022), starring Priyadarshi. Watching Darshi and Venu come together again in Darling for a scene that can only be described as silly and sexist is somewhat puzzling. Darshi who plays Raghava, a newly-married guy, goes to Manikonda Swami's den looking for a solution to his problem: his new wife Anandi (Nabha Natesh) punches him anytime he tries to get close to her in the bedroom. Swami hands out two amulets to exorcise her, and sermonizes Raghav about the folly of getting married in the first place. "There is God, there is the Devil, and in the middle there is the wife," Swami says. This is the kind of two-bit philosophy that Darling tosses at us with unceasing enthusiasm, expecting us to be amused and impressed.

Darling opens with a drunk Raghava contemplating suicide after his bride-to-be elopes with her lover, shattering his lifelong dream of marrying a nice girl and taking her on a honeymoon to Paris. Anandi, a stranger, shows up and tells him to get his shit together. Five hours later, they are married. It turns out Anandi is an impulsive, quirky girl. And she has a good heart, too: cue a montage of her distributing meals at an old age home. Which man wouldn't fall for her?

Raghav, though, gets more than he bargained for when Anandi turns out to have multiple personality disorder. The film, at this point, tips into an outright parody of Anandi's medical condition. At no point does Raghav consider approaching a real doctor to treat his wife. Instead he reaches out to the girl that left him at the altar (Ananya Nagella) who happens to be a psychologist, and enlists her to help him fix Anandi. Her solution? An extreme form of exposure therapy in which Raghav shocks Anandi with a trip to her assaulter's house. Other times, Raghav decides that he can fix her by simply loving her despite the "torture" she puts him through. The torture being Anandi's unpredicability. Often she transforms into a protective boss-bitch named Aadi who beats up any man that comes close to Anandi, and she has a particular disliking for Raghav. Raghav endures her beatings and hides her disease from his unsuspecting parents (Muralidhar Goud & Kalynee Raj).

The worst of the insufferable characters in Darling are Raghav's friends (Vishnu Oi & Krishna Teja). They mock him when his wedding falls apart, give him terrible advice, and generally embody the thinly-veiled misogyny and wife-hating that is commonplace in comedies these days.

Nabha Natesh may have landed the meatiest role of her career yet - portraying five identities as Anandi - but she squanders it by hamming it up so much that we cower from second-hand embarrassment. One identity in particular is the stuff of nightmares - Paapa, a young child in pigtails, begging for candy and ice-cream in a baby voice. An Aparichitudu-style scene where Anandi rapidly cycles through her different identities should have been Nabha's moment to shine, but her face is largely frozen in a single expression. Only her stance, hair (c/o makeup artist) and voice (c/o dubbing artist) change. Priyadarshi hams up his performance, too, his signature look being one of frustration. Both their characters are so loud and unpleasant, they are hard to watch, much less care about.

Director Aswin Raam may have made several questionable calls, but his most unforgivable one is thinking that the film needed to be prolonged with several songs. Or that it needed a background score as loud and heavy-handed as it does. Vivek Sagar's score has its moments, but inside such a story and setting, it is often oppressing.

Under the guise of being a slapstick comedy, Darling trivializes a medical issue, and worse, isn't even funny or insightful about it. When a joke or two lands, it is only when the film is being self-aware rather than self-serious. Most of the time though, Darling is a grating parody that's just going for the cheap laughs.