It was one of the most exciting
weekends in recent times courtesy of the high-profile matches which were on
offer. This included Tiger Wood’s 80th PGA tour title, Team India’s
emphatic win over the Paks & Federer led Team Europe’s successful defense
of the Laver Cup. There were a couple of movies as well that I got to check out
apart from the games & one of them happened to be Shree Narayan’s “Batti Gul Meter Chalu”. Since his
previous outing was Akki’s “Toilet: Ek
Prem Katha”, I was particularly interested to watch it after all this also
seemed to be rooted in reality.
SK (Shahid Kapoor), Nauti
(Shraddha Kapoor) & Tripathi (Divyendu Sharma) were childhood friends who
stuck to each other through thick & thin. Among the three, SK was a sly
lawyer who was always on the lookout for some quick bucks which he acquired
through the blackmail of potential law offenders. Nauti was a fashion designer
while Tripathi who was the meekest among the three ventured into business &
opened a small-scale printing company.
However, with constant power shortages in the region; it wasn’t easy to
meet the demands of the customers & to make it worse, the electricity board
also slapped him with outrageous bills for illogical reasons. Hoping to resolve
the matter, he took it up with the ombudsman but to no avail. In the meantime,
the friendship between the trio also crumbled due to the affair between Nauti
& Tripathi which SK found it difficult to accept. Even though Tripathi
turned towards SK for his legal support, the latter’s frosty behavior kinda
made it evident that he wasn’t keen to help him out. So how was Tripathi going
to get out of this mess before he loses his entire livelihood???
With a host of praise worthy
movies to his credit, Shree Narayan has earned himself a respectable name as an
editor & hopes to achieve the same as a director as well. This happens to
be his third venture & just like “TEPK”,
he has opted for a social issue like the lack of electricity & the
cut-throat attitude of the electricity boards. He takes a considerable amount
of time to set the stage & by the time, he does come to the core issue it
doesn’t hit you as forcefully as one would expect. Apart from a couple of
scattered chuckles, the court scenes don’t make us sit up & take notice,
the blame for which also lies on Vipul Rawal’s rather average script which had
the potential but fizzes out with barely a whimper. None of the technical
aspects quite caught my eyes & hence doesn’t deserve a mention.
Despite the rather uninspiring
making, I felt all the three main artists has done a reasonably good job with
Shahid being the pick among the lot. He has given an earnest performance with
his humour & energy while quite a few like Sudhir Pandey, Farida Jalal
& Sushmita Mukherjee who are proven artists are wasted.
Verdict: With not much of a competition, the producers would have
hoped that the movie will recreate the magic of “TEPK”. But with a rather uninspiring & bland script, it failed
to impress the audience. In short, a rude shock to Shree who would have hoped
that the people would back him after his previous praise worthy outing!!!
Rating: 1.75/5
Regards…Ben
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