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Love Hostel Movie Review: Bobby Deol is deadly, but the film is not
Here's our review of Bobby Deol, Vikrant Massey and Sanya Malhotra starrer Love Hostel. The film has released on ZEE5 today.
Name: Love Hostel
Director: Shanker Raman
Cast: Bobby Deol, Sanya Malhotra, Vikrant Massey & others
Platform: Zee5
Rating: 2 stars
Honour killing has been a topic of discussion in varied feature films, with filmmakers adapting the ideas as per their sensibilities. The latest to join the list of films around this world is the Shanker Ramen directed Love Hostel. The plot unfolds around how, a daughter of a top Hindu politician, Sanya Malhotra decides to marry a Muslim, Vikrant Massey, whose father has been framed under the guise of being a terrorist. As families don’t support the move, the couple decides to abscond and find peace for themselves in a government safe house called Love Hostel, which is anything but safe. The political family use all their power to get hold of the absconded couple and hire the person who trims himself the “Rakhwala”, Bobby Deol. What happens next is something that unwinds through the narrative of Love Hostel. And you don’t need to know rocket science to guess this!
Director Shanker Raman sets up the world to explore the dark side of Haryana, and to keep things short and gritty, he misses to build any sort of tension through the narrative. You don’t root for either of the leads, as the director fails to create any sort of sympathy towards the leads, and this is due to a lack of characterisation. Too many subplots also act as a major spoiler in deviating from the core premise. While the first hour shows some spark, the entire build-up falls like a pack of cards towards the final 45 minutes. Bobby Deol’s character too is undercooked as there was a need to invest more time in curating a backstory for a serial killer like him, who is riding on such a strong and overpowering ideology.
The issue with Love Hostel also lies in the not so believable narrative with regards to the entire concept of ‘Love Hostel’ as also multiple other sub-tracks, including the backstory of Vikrant’s family. It hits the sweet note in having some interesting characters but loses the path by putting them in an undercooked scenario.
The background is decent, but it can’t do much since the screenplay doesn’t have enough moments to create intrigue around the scenario. A major chunk of the film unfolds in the night and hence, the cinematography and lighting too is on the darker side. The lighting is an issue with 90 of 100 films premiering on OTT platforms. The dialogues are decent, but there isn’t any that you take along once the end credits start rolling.
Talking of performances, Bobby Deol shines and delivers a rather powerful performance despite getting to play a hugely undercooked character. He is fierce all through the film, has a screen presence that’s enough to spike fear, and does well with his dialogue delivery too. However, he is let down by the not-so-well-written character. Sanya Malhotra too delivers an earnest performance, slipping into the mould of her multi-dimensional character. While she’s a breeze in some romantic scenes with Vikrant in the earlier frames of the film, she switches gears trying to get in the adrenaline rush to the narrative. Vikrant Massey is dependable as always and does well within the circle that the script entangled him in. Raj Arjun’s character is rather pointless, though he has done well in the arc. Akshay Oberoi and the rest of the actors are rather wasted, not getting enough scope to perform.
On the whole, Love Hostel is a below-average affair that doesn’t have much to offer. It rides on an exciting one-liner, but falters in the process of converting the idea into a full-length screenplay. The performances by three leads are the positives backed up with some decent production values are the positives, whereas the rest of it falls in the red zone.
ALSO READ: Sanya Malhotra on doing stunts in Love Hostel: It was fun and quite thrilling
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