Review: 'Karthik Calling Karthik' dials a wrong number

Film: Karthik Calling Karthik
Director: Vijay Lalwani
Cast: Farhan Akhtar, Deepika Padukone, Shefali Shah
Rating: **

You know those films that have a unique storyline, experiment with technique and are defined by that oft-repeated term – hatke. These films are lauded for trying out something new and appreciated for giving audiences a ‘different experience’ at the movies.

Karthik Calling Karthik (KCK), probably, has all the above features. But does that make the film entertaining, or even watchable? Hell no.

KCK starts off on an interesting note, dazzles you with its brilliant cinematography and eye-pleasing sets and some smart dialogues initially, but eventually suffers with that one ingredient responsible for most bad films – a shabby script. In the end, when the pieces fall together, you really want to ask what the point was after all.

Karthik (Akhtar) has nothing going for him – his job sucks, he has no friends and the love of his life, Shonali (Padukone) isn’t even aware of his existence in spite of having worked in the same office as him for nearly four years.

Karthik suffers from a confidence problem mainly because he holds himself responsible for the death of his brother when they were little kids. He seeks help from a psychiatrist (Shah) who looks at him from over her specks and mouths dialogues to the effect of ‘yeh tumhara vehem hai’, from time to time.

Even as the memory of his brother’s death comes back to haunt him repeatedly, Karthik is fired from his job. Having nothing to live for, Karthik is on the verge of committing suicide, when his phone rings.

If you’ve seen the promos, you know what happens at this point. Someone who sounds just like Karthik speaks up from the other end, and introduces himself as Karthik.

Why? What? How? The film answers the questions in due time. Only, when it does, you wonder why a round trip was needed to narrate what could have been said in a one-way journey.

The first half has its moments. But some jokes, that work the first time, are repeated pointlessly. Like, at one point, when Shonali offers Karthik a drink, he asks her if she wants to take advantage of him being drunk.

In the next scene, Karthik says he doesn’t want to take advantage of Shonali being drunk. And sometime later, Karthik says: “I’m drunk too. So we can take advantage of each other now.” Ok, we get the point! People make out only when they are drunk?!

The characters are all unidimensional – Karthik, his girlfriend, his psychiatrist are good people. His boss, his colleague, his landlord are bad people, two of who are cheating on their wives.

Farhan may have put in a good act – it’s his best, certainly, among just three films so far – and Deepika looks smoldering and performs well too. But that’s hardly reason enough to sit through this one.

Unless you don’t mind thinking to yourself in the end, “THIS is what it was all about?!”