Karthik Calling Karthik

It was only a matter of time before I got around to writing the review for this one.  Yes you can get the snide remarks started in response to this post.  Or even the corny jokes because nothing lesser would be expected as a response.  I am well aware and totally prepared for the same.

KCK released 3 years back to the date actually (26^th February 2010) and therefore exactly 4 months before I started blogging.  Star Gold was playing KCK last week (or was it the week before) and I guess I had to see it once again.  Because I didn’t enjoy it as much as people did, the first time around and wanted to figure out if I had missed something.

 

Turns out that I hadn’t missed much and my rating of 6 on 10 (hypothetically if I had been reviewing 4 months earlier) stays.  I would have loved to give KCK 7 and it would have nothing to do with the movie being my namesake.  It would have everything to do with the subject matter – schizophrenia.

 

I must tip my hat to Vijay Lalwani for having the courage to first of all pick up a topic as sensitive and challenging as this.  In fact, the movie was going all well till the sequence where Karthik Narayan (Farhan Akhtar) decides to take a train to an unknown destination.  Something that didn’t go quite well with me because of the number of ways that the destination could have been revealed during the journey. 

 

Karthik Narayan is an IIT IIM Graduate (another fact that irks me because of the way these degrees are freely distributed) working for a construction company where his boss Kamath (Ram Kapoor) has made his life hell.  He is almost non existant.  He doesn’t have any friends.  He doesn’t even have a mobile phone.

 

The only person he wants to impress and get noticed by is Shonali Mukherjee (Deepika Padukone) – the office architect.  But she doesn’t even know that Karthik is an employee.  Things are not looking too great for our hero but then one day, at 5 am, he gets a call. From himself.  Not once.  Not twice but everyday at 5 am.  Slowly, his luck and life starts turning around and his dreams start coming true one by one. 

 

As mentioned earlier, if it weren’t for the consistency errors I would have given KCK a 7.  The performances are very strong.  Farhan Akhtar is, as always, composed and strong on screen with Deepika providing the welcome glam quotient.  Ram Kapoor is really despicable in his role as Kamath (which is a good thing). 

 

The metamorphosis from loser Karthik to winner Karthik is shown well.  Could have been edited better though.  I thought at least 15 minutes could have been chopped from the end.  The music from Shankar Ehsaan Loy is really good.  Overally, a good watch.  But could have been so much better (as always). 6 on 10.

 

Trailer on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIZ2OwW7HJU