Release date:
|
September 18, 2015
|
Director:
|
Nikhil Advani
|
Cast:
Language:
|
Imran Khan, Kangna Ranaut, Vivan
Bhathena
Hindi
|
Among the many ways one
might react to Katti Batti, there are
these two options:
(a) laugh till you cry
at the sheer nothingness of it all; or
(b) be bored to tears.
I read a report this
morning that Aamir Khan wept after he watched this film starring Kangna Ranaut
and his nephew Imran Khan. Now I think I know why.
Katti
Batti
is director Nikhil Advani’s second fiasco in eight days. He helmed last week’s Hero, which feels National Award-worthy
in comparison with this latest disaster. It’s hard to explain the story to you,
since the script seems unsure of what it wants to be: a youthful romance about the
challenges that the 21st century throws up or a romcom with a tragic
twist or a love triangle or (in passing) a he-said-she-said-style relationship
saga or all the above. I’m going with all the above = a boring mish-mash of too
many things that add up to naught.
One of the film’s
ambitions is painfully obvious: it wants to be considered cool. It has no philosophy
or ideology via which to achieve that goal, so instead, when the leads – Payal Malhotra
(Kangna) and Madhav Kabra a.k.a Maddy (Imran) – start living together,
characters repeat the term “live-in relationship” more than once, in case we
don’t get how ‘modern’ they are; someone reads 50 Shades of Grey to a woman on her deathbed; Maddy works for an
architecture firm with funky illustrations on its bathroom walls; and the said
firm is populated with sundry cardboard cut-outs for characters including a raucous
south Indian boss called Ramalingam, an elderly Mrs D’silva who says “my child”
as Bollywood Christians always do and a Punjabi client called Ahuja who is as
loud as Bollywood Punjabis always are.
The biggest claim to coolth
is laid when Maddy relates his dukhbhari
kahani to his buddy Roger.
At one point, Roger cuts
in to say: Chalo (come).
Maddy asks: Kahaan (where)?
Roger replies gravely: Ek aisi jagah jahaan sab tumhari baatein samjhenge (To a place where
everyone will understand you).
Ooh.
Cut to a Sufi Music
Festival at what seems like a heritage location. Deep. So very deep.
At the fest, Roger
performs with his band which he calls (I need you to sit down and hold on to
something while you read the next bit) FOSLA = Frustrated
One-Sided Lovers Association. Not even an original, I’ve since learnt. But so
cool, na?
About that hard-to-explain
story… Middle-class, earnest Maddy and wealthy, bohemian Payal meet at
architecture school. Pricey Payal watches in amusement as he makes an ass of
himself over her before the entire college…because, you know, that’s what Hindi
film heroines do. He wants love, she’s wants “timepass” – now there’s a cinematic
gender role reversal that should have been explored, but it goes nowhere, lost
in a surfeit of pretty frames and gimmicky editing. They fall in love, they shack
up for five years, they break up, then he tries to get her back. The non-linear
narrative resorts to multiple flashbacks that fail to camouflage the film’s
emptiness.
Katti
Batti
is not merely superficial though. It comes across as being full of itself, clearly
convinced that it is emotional, profound and often funny when in truth it is pretentious,
pompous, manipulative, stretched beyond endurance and boring.
The trailer created an
impression that this is a film about a girl and a boy with Kangna’s meatier,
more interesting character stealing the show the way Kareena’s Geet did though
she and Shahid Kapoor got equal screen time in Jab We Met. False. Katti
Batti is about a boy. It is primarily devoted to Maddy’s effort to get back
with Payal. She is missing from much of the action. And the story is told from his
point of view, with Imran’s drab Maddy virtually monopolising the screen and
Kangna’s Payal – the potentially more exciting character – a supporting player.
Having relegated this
fine actress to the sidelines, Katti
Batti then rubs chilli in our wounds by giving her more hairstyles than she
has lines to speak. Imran is sincere and likeable, but he has his limitations
and needs a good director to draw out the best of him. Unfortunately, Nikhil is
no Abbas Tyrewala, but he does give us a silly airport chase scene which falls
flat in comparison with the silly-yet-hilarious climax of Abbas’ Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na
that launched Imran.
Even Shankar Ehsaan Loy’s pleasantly peppy songs Lip to lip and the cheekily titled Jaago Mohan pyaare (cheeky, since it shares its name with the devastatingly melancholy song featuring Raj Kapoor and Nargis in Jaagte Raho) are wasted here. The latter is played at screaming volume for some reason. Perhaps to distract us from the pointlessness of the proceedings?
Doesn’t work. You see, Katti Batti is an irredeemable,
unsalvageable mess.
Rating
(out of five): ½
CBFC Rating (India):
|
U/A
|
Running time:
|
140 minutes
|
