Rating : 2.8/5 (Average)
Genre : Drama
Year : 2018
Running time : 2 hours 41 minutes
Director : Shree Narayan Singh
Cast : Shahid Kapoor, Shraddha Kapoor, Divyendu Sharma, Yami Gautam
Kid rating : PG
Do recall that the reason I’d wanted to see “Batti Gul Meter Chalu” was that it was helmed by the guy who directed “Toilet: Ek Prem Katha”. I’d expected it to be at least as good if not better than Toilet. And in this I am disappointed. Batti Gul Meter Chalu is just about average, watchable maybe once.
Batti Gul Meter Chalu is about corruption in the electricity supply sector. We are presented this problem via three friends : Lalita Nautical (Shraddha Kapoor), Sushil Kumar Pant (Shahid Kapoor) and Sunder Mohan Tripathi (Divyendu Sharma, whom you might remember from Pyaar ka Punchnama). When Tripathi’s newly set-up business runs into problems with the electricity department because of trumped up bills he can find no recourse. Lalita aka “Nauti” and lawyer Sushil aka “SK” jump in to help their friend.
The first half of Batti Gul is devoted to the threesome and their easy camaraderie. In the second half of the film, things take a serious turn and there is plenty of courtroom drama. While the story by itself is not uninteresting, the characters are so overdone, it made it hard to actually root for any of them. The only one I felt not annoyed by was Divyendu Sharma’s character – Tripathi. Shahid hams it up big time, a far cry from his Kaminey days. Yami Gautam’s smarmy character has narrow scope, and is further weakened by cliched dialogs. Shraddha is as un-impactful as always.
Batti Gul is a serious misstep by director Singh. This could have been a much better film, but as is, suffers from poor screenplay, editing and a complete lack of finesse. The courtroom scenes are especially disjointed; I would have liked more coherence in this film, and that’s putting it mildly. Also for a social issue film, it dithers on its messaging, and relies too much on sexist comedy. It is overly long and could have been cut to half its length.
So what’s good about it? It is an underdog film – you know there’s justice a-coming! There is some well-done emotional drama. Sushmita Mukherjee is delectably droll as the judge in the courtroom drama.
So, this is still watchable – if you are a sucker for social issue films like I am.
Kidwise: 1 tenuous lip-lock. Some sexist jokes.
