Archana 31 Not Out movie review: Much ado about marriages

'Archana 31 Not Out' is not a sports movie as the title would prompt you to believe. The Aiswarya Lakshmi starrer conceived and scripted by Akhil Anilkumar, with co-writers Vivek Chandran and Ajay Vijayan, is all about the process of how the marriage processes are scripted in small towns in Kerala.

It pans through the Mallu neighbourhood psyche that is predetermined to see through weddings from the prism of all except the bride.

In this case, Archana, our protagonist, is a private school teacher, who is also the sole breadwinner of a lower middle-class family. She juggles between domestic compulsions and her work, in between presenting herself as a prospective bride to wannabe suitors and their families.

In Archana’s case, most of the brokered deals do not fall through or are called off – to be precise she has had 30 failed attempts at reaching the finishing point of tying a wedding knot.

But our lady is not the usual wailing damsel in distress and just records these in her calendar. She takes it sportingly without melodrama. That she is also a local sportsperson, a cricketer, we only come to know later.

Her 31st outing in the altar of bride selection and the resultant chaos is what Archana 31 not out is all about. The filmmakers have chosen a simple approach and the script is in sync with it, sprinkling the rural idiosyncrasies associated with marriages. Added with a tinge of clean humour, Archana 31 is an simple movie which you can watch without pretensions.

Aiswarya Lakshmi, the pivot of the movie, carries out her character without much fuss – much like her screen avataar.

The movie itself is just below 2 hours of screen time, which makes it a fun watch.