Malligadu Marriage Bureau Review

We always wonder what drives people to invest in films that they know will not likely recover the investment. Why someone would put their hard (or ill) earned money into the hands of someone else with full knowledge that they are not likely to see it again is a question that we would definitely like answered.

Take the case of any film starring Srikanth these days. The actor has had his run. He is now better off in multi-starrers playing the lovable side-kick or the devoted younger (?) brother. He does not have the fan following of superstars that his movies will draw in an opening no matter what. Still, our man had at least two releases in the last two months, and a muhurat of a new film. If we try hard enough, we might just be able to figure out what came first - the chicken or the egg - but I don't think we will ever know the motivation of these producers.

Coming to Malligadu Marriage Bureau, the film does not aim to do anything more than what countless other Telugu films have done so far. It has a simple story: a marriage bureau owner and his problems - both his own and those of his clients - and how he attempts to solve them.

Srikanth (Malli) owns a marriage bureau. He promises the heroine's (Manochitra) parents that he will get her married. Malli has two other clients, Bobby (Vennela Kishore), who is in love with a friend, and Chotu Bhai (Brahmanandam), a middle-aged comic goon, who needs to get married within a week.

Bobby's problem is that one of his friends cheats him and proposes to the girl he loves before he does. He now has the make the girl fall out of love with the friend and fall in love with him.

Chotu Bhai's problem is that the new ACP in town, Nayak (Posani Krishna Murali), will only spare his life if he's married and has a family. The heroine is completely against marriage, and refuses to get married.

Malli, meanwhile, has his own share of problems, and keeps visiting a man in the hospital (don't get any ideas, the man is his sister's fiancée). How all these threads reach their conclusion forms the crux of the movie.

Malligadu's basic problem lies in how absolutely predictable everything in the movie is. The characters are all broad stereotypes of the characters that the actors have played in other movies. They behave exactly as we expect them to. The direction is largely uninspired, with the director's sole aim being to wrap up the movie within his limited budget.

The actors seem suitably disinterested, and go through the motions. Srikanth goes through his role without an iota of effort. The heroine slaps on her makeup and looks pretty while appearing to chew gum through the length of the movie. The comedians, Brahmanandam, Vennela Kishore, Nandu, Fish Venkat, Posani and the others go through the motions.

Malligadu also resolutely refuses to get into any kind of skin show or double entendre comedy, which is a good thing, but the front-benchers might not essentially agree with us. The producer gave the director a limited budget, which he spends judiciously and makes the film look decent. The music is of the loo-break variety.

Malligadu will be forgotten soon, and will surely become a staple on Gemini Movies, that re-runner of mediocre films. You can safely stay away.