Aggressive Vijay Devarakonda mellows down to self-pity

After flops like 'NOTA' and 'Dear Comrade,' young sensation Vijay Devarakonda returns with 'World Famous Lover' which belies high expectations. Despite playing a aggressive lover-turned-husband, he ends up as a self-piteous guy, who runs helter and skelter to reconstruct his broken live-in relationship with his beloved (Raashi Khanna).

Lot of confusion around his characterisation takes the sting of Vijay Devarakonda's performance and makes him brittle, teary-eyed and his frustrated behaviour goes overboard at times.

The plot sounds like a modern tale as two young souls begin to live-in, when girl's rich father declines their love.

But indifferent behaviour and selfish attitude of Vijay, an aspiring novelist, causes lot heart pain for his working wife (Raashi Khanna), who indulges even in love making with zero interest, almost like a clichéd daily chore.

Rather than working on the differences of real-life couple, director Kranthi invests more time on fictional characters and fails to strike a chord.

Of course, he wanted the author to understand the meaning of love through his stories but it gets on the nerves of the audience in the dreary second half.

Coming to the storyline, Gautam (Vijay Devarakonda) is passionate about writing. He quits a well-paid job to pursue his dream of writing a novel but unable to succeed even after 1 ½ years, leading to cracks in their relationship.

After Yamini(Raashi Khanna) walks out on him, he begins to pen a novel titled 'World Famous Lover' and imagines himself as the protoganist in his fictional story. He is seen a coal miner (Seenayya) and flamboyant business executive in Paris.

No doubt, Seenayya steals the show with Telangana dialect and his non-chalant love for his dusky wife (Aishwarya Rajesh). On the other hand, he appears as a smart lover who floors a pretty woman pilot in Paris.

In both the stories, he makes a few sacrifices including a bizarre eye donation to his lover in Paris, to keep his beloved happy. But no such sacrifices are required in his real-life barring a few adjustments in his lifestyle.

He needs to spend more time with his wife in kitchen and converse with her on dining table and take her out on weekends, so the idea of story-inspired realisation goes for a toss.

Instead of glamour, pretty girls Raashi Khanna, Aishwarya Rajesh and Izabelle shed copious tears and glycerine bottles would have added to the lavish production cost.

Hope, producer and distributors don't need an extra handkerchief in the days to come.