Ring barse
Khaled Mohamed
Karthik Calling Karthik
Cast: Farhan Akhtar, Deepika Padukone, a telephone (landline)
Director: Vijay Lalwani
Rating: Two stars
Mouse sweet mouse. He stumbles, bumbles, mumbles for as many as four years at a swankyish office. A cross between Rocket Singh and Woody Allen, he writes up a thousand-plus emails but doesn’t send them to the gorgeous woman in that see-through cabin who seems to be doing damn-all.Evidently, this guy’s not headed for any hall of fame or ill-fame. He’s just a crashing bore.
Yeah but you know the drift. The undermouse is just about to become a Mighty Mouse that roars crores, thanks to director Vijay Lalwani’s Karthik Calling Karthik, in principle an enterprise of potential. In fact, you’re all keyed up for a psycho-thriller which seeks to yoke matters of the heart with a disturbed mind. Dilwala meets Cuckoo? Huh, terrific.
Sorry to say, your high hopes crashland. The effort to get close to the main protagonist’s mind jungle is a bungle. Okay, so he plays around with a Rubik’s Cube. So what?And no distinction is made at all between psycho-analysis and psychiatry. That’s a huge flaw, indicating the director-writer’s shallow understanding of the distinct disciplines. All you get is an over-dolled up shrink, who looks more more serious than a stockbroker reading the year’s budget. She’s quite a giggle, portrayed starchily by the usually bankable Shifaali Shah (her spelling, not mine). Once she plays around with fingers, then she wears a shawl, then she looks utterly distraught. Quite a Freud egg bhurji, she.
To be fair, the screenplay does kick off engrossingly enough, describing the daily beat of meek Karthik (Farhan Akhtar). He deals with a greedy landlord (know any other types?), blends into the workplace woodwork, is terrorised by a beastly boss (Ram Kumar hamming as if he was portraying Idi Amin), and our little mouse also gazes at that see-through cabin woman (Deepika Padukone) the way a kid longs for a lollipop. More: there are those childhood-related, soft-focus nightmares in which his big brother wanted to push him into a well (puhlease). Luck by chance, the big bro plunged and perished himself. Oh well, a vague allusion, this, to Hollywood’s Ordinary People.
Thanks to Alexander Graham Bell’s wunderbar invention, life reverses. At 5 am, a voice over the phone tells Mousy what to do. Abracadabra. Landlord’s falling at his feet, Beastly Boss decrees a super promotion, See-Through is quaffing coffee with him in Aati-Kya-Khandala, and they’re even pubbing besides making cool conversation about taking advantage of each other in a drunken stupor. Mercifully, no one cries, “Humse bhool ho gayee.” Aieeeee.
So far, so okay. Then the pyscho-babble comes on thick as a brick. Mighty is back to being Mouse again, even taking off for a blind trip to South India (even he must not know where he’s headed). The last section of this overly-long 16-reeler, alas, places your teeth at edge. The screenplay becomes ridiculous,. Plus, who-cares-for-the-viewer editing cuts are used to skip over the rank implausibilities of the plot. Can’t show it (a suicide aftermath scene), forget it. Although the dialogue is hip, the twists and turns of the dramaturgy are anything but. To elaborate on this aspect would mean too many spoilers. Suffice it say, you can’t understand why there are so many repetitions of, “Are you mad?”, “Are you okay”, “You need help.”
So do you. Illnesses are being tackled by the movies nowadays, the only outsanding result being Taare Zameen Par. This one deals with schizophrenia but superficially and ponderously. Literally, a character is shown reading a book titled “Understanding Schizophrenia.” Wow…you learn less about the subject than you did in the past from unaffected thrillers like Red Rose in or the black-and-white drama Raat aur Din.
Frequently, the tempo crawls like a snail on tranquilisers. The background songs and montages post-intermission are redundant. As for the backstories for both Mouse and See-Through Cabin Lady, naaaah, unless u count a hyper cousin who pops up like a Jack-in-the-box. All the supporting characters are caricatured, especially the Idi Amin Boss and an office Romeo, both of whom are reported to have wives and affairs. Tsk tsk. READ MORE HERE
Nikhat Kazmi - KCK 3.5 Stars
ReplyDeleteIn the mood for serious cinema? Watch Karthik Calling Karthik
Does it work?
It does, At one level. Vijay Lalwani's film is immensely watchable, purely for the class act by Farhan Akhtar in the title role. Even Deepika Padukone pitches in perfectly as the sassy, uptown girl who has burnt her fingers a bit too much, as do the fringe players like Ram Kapoor and Shefali Chayya. One does wish there was a bit more of the bubbly Ms Padukone, though. Where it doesn't work is the entertainment factor. The screenplay does tend to get a bit clunky and the drama somewhat heavy as the director looks for text book resolutions of the teasing problem. But, by and large, there is a thrill factor that keeps the momentum on.
IndiaGlitz 3/5
ReplyDeleteKarthik Calling Karthik - Calls for some enigmatic moments
‘Karthik Calling Karthik’ is a movie that one can admire without exactly embracing it.
Farhan Akhtar’s Excel Entertainment’s next after ‘Luck By Change’ is a paranoia-inducing suspenser about a spit personality in this sort of psycho thriller toned mind –game of a movie.
Crafted with a commanding aloof precision by Vijay Lalwani in his first outing as a writer and a helmer takes an unusual dive into this genre which is not common in Bollywood without apparent rules and manages to generates an intriguing intellectual intrigue that covers 70% of its running time which allows to arouse buffs, trendies and techies more than the mainstream auds.
It’s not that dark, edge of the seat thingie but answers your ‘inner voice’ which demands some expecting moments.