Darling Darling has a plot so complicated that only two persons in the cast finally
understand what has happened, and those two do not include the heroine or the
hero. The heroine cannot understand it for the simple reason that she has just
about enough gray matter to crack jumbles of one letter, and any plot that needs
more than that much of language to narrate would be too much for the poor girl.
The hero cannot understand it for an even simpler reason - the movie doesn't have
a hero! So read on as we narrate the mind-numbing plot, but be warned that you
will be using up your next 9 months' quota of IQ.
Kiran (Saikiran) starts out by trying to be the hero of the movie when he promises
a friend that he'll get him married to his sweetheart (the friend's sweetheart,
not Kiran's - the complications don't start so early) against all opposition.
Unfortunately, he's grossly overestimated his machismo, and has to run away from
the village when he's caught in the process of running away with the girl (this
latter running away is what he does before he actually needs to run away, which
is the former running away, that is a consequence of the latter running away -
and the complications haven't even started). Incidentally, a good way to read
this review is to ignore everything in brackets. A better way is to ignore everything
outside them, too.
Kiran lands up at Hyderabad to pile on to his best friend Chinni Krishna (Srikanth).
Now when this dude is not sleeping with 11 women the same night, he is singing
songs with them with lyrics that would make John Lennon and Bob Dylan wonder where
they were when the Lord was doling out the real creativity. A small sample:
- Yes channello coloring daily choodaali,
Internetlo ragging roju cheyyali
- (He) Titanic sundaraangive,
Naa dreamu girlu, temptayye kissu niyyave
(She) Hiteckku andagaadive,
Isthanu kissu ayithe nee housuwifune
- Pepsi paapa preminchestha,
Okay ante pelladestha
If you are still around, well, here we go again. Chinni falls despoly in love
with a girl Lata (Shaheen) who he sees randomly for about 5 seconds. He swears
that he will now sing only with her, and confines his little black book (actually
that's more like a little black book library) to the flames.
He manages to get to know her address, but on the way there gets his car into
a lady who eventually turns out to be Lata's aunt. He beats it from there fearing
an enraged crowd. Kiran, who coincidentally just happens to be at the same spot,
helps put aunt in a hospital, but scared that there will be a police case, gives
Chinni's card as his identity.
Now Lata, whose real name is Hema (no, it is Shaheen, but in the movie), is grateful to this Chinni (actually Kiran), and calls him home, but Chinni (the real Chinni) is scared to take the call because he is afraid they'll find out he did the accident, and so gives all the calls to Kiran, who is Chinni anyway now to Lata, Hema, and their cumulative aunt.
Chinni (the Kiran Chinni) and Hema fall in love over some conversations on the phone whose profundity makes you wish you were 4 years old all over again. They are about to meet up, but then Chinni (the Chinni Chinni) realizes that Hema is his Lata, and decides that he is going to be the villain of the movie, since there is no one fit to be hero.
He does a pretty good job of making sure that Kiran and Hema fail to meet despite
repeated attempts, and is happy when Kiran's dad (Chandramohan) fixes up a match
for Kiran, but then realizes that the bride-to-be just happens, again, to be Hema.
And he's at it all over again trying to disrupt the marriage.
The film proceeds now at breakneck speed (relative, that is, to a full-length documentary feature on the life and times of a desert snail). Kiran realizes that Chinni is trying to steal Hema, and thus becomes only the second member in the cast to know what is happening. But since Srikanth is the bigger star (relative, relative, so don't get so worked up), Kiran can't be the hero (and given his screen presence, you're happy for that), and so is dragged away by the goons.
Hema's granddads' henchmen now accost Chinni, and he badly beats them up, thereby
giving the all-important twist to this movie where the bad guy beats up the good
guys in the climax. Since he's now done what the hero is supposed to do, he decides
he might as well become the hero, and sacrifices his love by uniting Kiran and
Hema. But it is too late! The audiences have already left!
The film reaches its high point of subtlety when Chinni tells Hema in the end,
"Yes, I am Chinni, but he is your Chinni," pointing to Kiran (who, incidentally,
has just done a 48 kilometer sprint and doesn't even realize it's a world record).
The babe accepts this without so much as a puzzled expression - she anyway didn't
understand anything after the Y in that dialogue.
Saikiran looks perfectly like the dumbo he is supposed to essay, and we are unable
to comment on whether that is brilliant acting or just his niche. But the only
time he enacts an emotional scene, in his Final Confrontation with Srikanth, he
has the desired effect - you do get emotional. Srikanth is okay, but Rajnikant
never needed two shots to show the cigarette landing in his mouth. As for Shaheen,
we're sure some shots from this film will end up in indianmasala.com, so there.
Even the template freaks who feel that a review isn't complete without comments
on the music, the direction, the way the film will shape history etc. don't want
to know about anything else - believe us, you did this one a huge favor already
by just reading about it.