Lady Bachelors Review

9:00pm, 9:15pm, 9:30pm, 9:45pm, 10:00pm...

Think those are the starting times for the second shows in Hyderabad? Guess again. They're the times I looked at my watch during this wretched movie just to make sure time hadn't actually stopped altogether.

Following in the footsteps of Bachelors, College and Chocolate, Lady Bachelors resurrects one of the most clichéd themes of all times: naughty-bachelors. The film imparts a new low to the term "paying audience". After viewing it, it seemed less likely that it was an actual film, and more likely that the whole thing was an elaborate sting operation set up by the Government to see if they could get Al-Qaida members to come to them.

Neelambari (Jyothi Misra) is the only chaste member of a vile group of raunchy lady-bachelors (RLBs). Neelambari is chaste in the sense that she will fall only for the 'guy' who doesn't immediately ejaculate on her shoes. Enter Venkata Subba Rao (Venkat), the 'guy'. He expresses his love to her, to which she replies by saying that she will believe him only if he comes to her hostel in the dead of the night and kisses her within three days (aha! an Agni Pariksha! we guess our man has to resist all the RLBs' moves and go straight to her!).

But alas! All three days he follows one or the other RLBs into their rooms, mistaking them for Neelambari. The question, of course, is that if Venkat loved Neelambari so much, couldn't he have recognized that it is not Neelambari that he is following in the first place?

Naturally, answering such a simple question would require logical thinking, which would require a brain, which is probably too much to ask of anybody involved in this bomb. Finally, there is this slapping the RLBs back to senses - 'life is short and blah blah blah blah blah blah.' (Funny! After the movie, we thought life is not short enough.)

The performances are shoddy at best. Venkat, the actor (contrary to all evidence, we have to believe he is one), acts like he's got pieces of dental gauze lodged in his back teeth, and it's hard to tell whether he's trying to be funny or intentionally incoherent. Talk about Jyothi Misra... we'll say she is to action what the kazoo (a rude musical instrument) is to music. Period.

Making the matters worse, director Udaya Kanth takes the script and pretty much wipes his ass with it. There are numerous "hand-held" shots that make you feel sick. Rumor has it that he has figured that taking the things that made sense in that film and making them incomprehensible would appeal to modern audiences. Our bet is that he tried to convince somebody in the universe that being an idiot and being a filmmaker have some symbiotic relationship.

Lady Bachelors is a kind of film that makes you count the number of lights in the theater's chandelier (mine had eleven) and debate on whether or not you should kick the person in front of you in the back of the head just to see some action. Period.