FILMIKHABAR

Critic's Rating:

Story: Puneet and Munmun, an archetypal nuclear family, find their ordered life being shaken apart when they have a visitor, Chachaji, who refuses to leave their house, despite an extended stay. Will they miss him when he goes?

Movie Review: Neat. Subtle. And softly funny. Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge is quite unlike the hysterical laugh acts that have been trying terribly hard to make you laugh in recent Bollywood. More of a chuckle-and-a-smirk drama, this one doesn't even try to convince you that life is all ha-ha-he-he. Instead, it creates situations and characters that fill you with warmth and make you smile with the familiar quirkiness of recognisable situations.

Now when was the last time you pulled your hair out when your `unwanted' relatives from Gorakhpur, or any other small town, landed in your pint-sized flat with their pet peeves and infuriating habits. Like gargling before the break of dawn, creating man-made floods in your tiny washroom or converting your favourite window into a make-shift clothesline...Well, that's what our avuncular Chachaji (Paresh Rawal) does when he arrives unannounced at friend Putani's son, Pappu's (Ajay Devgn) house. Pappu's uptown wife (Konkana Sen Sharma) is soon forced to fry pakoras and play hostess to his neighbourhood friends who are naturally drawn irresistibly to this friendly old man who has a grandma's remedy for all their cures and a bhajan for all their woes. It doesn't take long for anger to be replaced by genuine warmth, as Chachaji carries with him a whole culture into the antiseptic flat which had hitherto housed a family that was simply running in a rat race.

Paresh Rawal leads the gentle humour brigade that finds great foot soldiers in the likes of Devgn (restrained and likeable), Konkana (earthy and grounded), Satish Kaushik (watchable) and Sanjay Mishra (impressive). Is it truly back to the 1980s for Bollywood comedies? Wait and watch out for some more of the Basu Chatterjee-Hrishikesh Mukherjee brand revival.

A word about:
Performances: Paresh Rawal's pitches a picture perfect Chachaji, while Ajay Devgn and Sanjay Mishra are immensely watchable.

Story: Robin Bhatt and Tushar Hiranandani pick up a familiar tale and give it a refreshing twist.

Dialogues: The humour is gentle and subtle and never tries to drown you with its desperation to make you laugh.

Styling: Upper middle class Mumbai fashion meets mofussil town chaddis and dhotis.

Inspiration: The 1980s family-ishtyle comedies of Basu Chatterjee and Hrishikesh Mukherjee.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/movie-reviews/hindi/Atithi-Tum-Kab-Jaoge/moviereview/5641260.cms

For a substantial portion of Karthik Calling Karthik, writer-director Vijay Lalwani succeeds in keeping you reasonably intrigued. But this is not an easy film to appreciate.

Farhan Akhtar stars as meek construction firm-employee Karthik Narayan who's bullied by his colleagues, tormented by his boss, and barely even noticed by the gorgeous co-worker he's got a crush on.

When he suddenly starts receiving mysterious phone-calls from a person who claims to be Karthik himself, our hero finds it in himself to face the world. The voice on the other end empowers him to confront his oppressors and woo his girl. His life has clearly changed for the better, and he has those 5 am phone calls to thank. But when the caller is suddenly angered, Karthik's life begins to spiral downwards.

Part-office romance part-psychological study, Karthik Calling Karthik never quite succeeds in striking a consistent tone. Despite its promising premise, the film ultimately fails to work because of a clumsy screenplay that doesn't know which way to go. Despite its snail-like pace, you are hopeful thefilm will culminate in a thrilling discovery, but the central conceit is a disappointing letdown, not to mention impossibly far-fetched.

It's difficult to discuss the film's shortcomings in detail without giving away too much of its supposed suspense, but suffice to say the film isn't even faithful to its own logic. In its handling of a mental illness, Karthik Calling Karthik is naïve and superficial, and leaves more questions unanswered than addressed.

The romantic portions between Karthik and his colleague Shonali (played by Deepika Padukone) are engaging and entirely watchable because the director employs a contemporary, urban grammar in building their relationship. The same, unfortunately, can't be said for thefilm 's second half in which Karthik heads off on a 'blind' journey to run away from his problems. The key issue here is that Lalwani reveals his suspense fairly early in the screenplay, and yet thefilm plods along tediously for another 45-odd minutes or so.

Of the leads, Farhan Akhtar seizes your attention as the mousy loser guy, but constructs what is ultimately an inconsistent character because of the shoddy script. Deepika Padukone is easy on the eye, but unconvincing as an ambitious architect, never once seen so much as discussing a building plan.

In the end, Karthik Calling Karthik appears confused and half-baked, and it commits that deadly unforgivable cinematic sin – it bores you!

I'm going with a generous two out of five for director Vijay Lalwani's Karthik Calling Karthik. Hang up, it's a wrong number.

Rating: 2/5