Umm..so why did Karthik call exactly?...

Just came back from an impromptu movie evening. PS and I went to see Karthik Calling Karthik.

This is a movie from the iconic director cum actor Farhan Akhtar who made his mark and gave indelible memories with his first movie Dil Chahta Hai (First day second show after all of us bunked class - remember?). Prior expectations from the movie were therefore quite high. Of course the official and word of mouth reviews of the movie were very harsh. There was actually a lady on one of the numerous news channels who panned the movie so badly it seemed Farhan may have been her estranged ex-boyfriend or something.

With the slew of such reviews we were a bit apprehensive about going for the movie but in the end decided to bite the bullet and see for ourselves.

And what a brilliant decision this was! The movie is a super exciting thriller with edge of the seat suspense and nibble-your-nails-to-the-bone mystery. Unfortunately, the only mystery we could perceive was whether Farhan Akhtar had actually chosen this script and made this movie! And if yes, WHY??

Easily one of the longest drawn out, cliched, rambling, unintelligent, factually incorrect movies I've seen in a while - and that's saying a lot (http://swappinglives.blogspot.com/2009/09/weird-movie-week.html ).

Karthik is a bumbling loser (if anyone misspells 'looser', i'll kill him / her) in life who despite a good education works as a sort of pseudo clerk/sales person in a construction company (?). (Obviously people born with a silver spoon in their mouths should not try to create realistic workplace scenarios). Anyway, you have all the regular stuff about people dumping work on him, boss screaming at him, pretty-young-thing-who-he-loves-not-being-aware-of-his-existence, office peon making snide remarks at him. And then some more shit happens and he is publicly humiliated and fired - the good thing being that the pretty young thing finally gets aware of his existence before promptly forgetting again while canoodling with her in-office-in-your-face-goateed-boyfriend.

K goes home devastated and tries to commit suicide. But just as we were all going to be spared more KcK torture, the phone rings and it is Karthik calling Karthik to save him from himself (see? so smart)

Anyway, the guy on the phone advises him and after a series of unlikely incidents K is installed in a corner office, makes a lot of money and gets the pretty young thing (PYT) (Incidentally the boyfriend is shown to be a married guy. Now how unlikely is this? K was in awe of this girl for 2-3 years and isn't it far more likely that she actually got a perfectly normal boyfriend in the meantime? But Nooo, the hero HAS to get the girl. I think in such makeover movies the guy should get another nice girl rather than the same one - far more likely).

Of course things cannot run smoothly as K still gets hour long calls from K. He tells PYT and his psychiatrist. Lots of unlikely doodah happens till the mystery is finally revealed. Now i'm not giving any spoilers here but trust me, you're not missing much...

One good thing I liked about the movie was when some scenes faded into black & white with some colour element accentuating the change. Like the window with the red light flashing across it in the Cochin scene. I thought aesthetically that was very interesting.


Dil Chahta Hai, Lakshya, Rock on....Karthik calling Karthik - really? What's happening Farhan?



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