Khatta Meetha

The build up to this movie was as big as it turned out to be a damp squib. Akshay Kumar visiting RK Laxman and the movie touted to be oriented towards the common man couldn’t have been further from the truth. Somewhere I had expected maybe just a little bit better than what it turned out to be. Thankfully I can provide 2 excuses for having watched this movie – that I need to review it and that mum wanted to have a dekko coz this was a remake of a Malayalam movie, Vella Anakalude Naatu (Land of White Elephants in translation).


Sachin Tichkule (AK) is a something of a good for nothing black sheep in what is considered to be an otherwise very successful family. The family used to be one of the royals of Satara but is currently relegated to having only one large mansion in which Sachin stays the parents (Kulbhushan Kharbhanda & Aruna Irani), 2 brothers who are married, 1 sister and her husband and 1 young sister (Urvashi Sharma). Our hero (wonder how we can call him that) is a government licensed contractor who is heavily in debt thanks to his payments not getting cleared by the municipal corporation thanks to him taking the easy way out and cutting corners.

Not that the rest of the family is not involved in spurious methods of making monies but the junior Tichkule is typically made the scapegoat coz he has no money ever. Things do start falling apart for the other members of the family when a bridge that they built collapses and leads to the death of 65 people. Using the family driver (Tinu Anand) as a scapegoat and with the help of the local politican Sanjay Rana, the elder Tichkules manage to wriggle out of a sticky situation. However they did not consider the effect one Azad (Makarand Deshpande) would have coz he has lost his wife and kid in the accident. When he does not receive any support from the government he decides to take matters up himself and starts investigating the people involved.

Parallely, Sachin is now thrilled to hear that a new commissioner has arrived in town and hopes that his payments would be released. New commissioner or not, how he expects the government to release payments when he has a case pending against them is beyond me. Nevertheless, to add to his misery, the new commissioner turns out to be Gehna Ganpule (Trisha) who was his college love interest – an aspect that is revealed only a bit later in the movie but is extremely predictable. Now it would seem that Sachin and Gehna parted ways in less than an amicable way over an argument when Sachin slaps her in a fit of rage coz she refuses to support the college strike. Now what comes to light is that our hero used to be a staunch follower of papa dear – Gandhivadi and all. But the tragic turn of his love life and 3 years of slogging of in Mumbai has gotten him down to ground zero. The love hate relationship comes to a head when Sachin gets Gehna incorrectly trapped in a bribery case.

Priyadarshan continues with his string of really loud movies which started with either Hulchul or Hungama (I cant recollect). For some reason he believes that the audience really cannot hear and that unless he gets his actors to scream, the message may not get through. The idea of the movie of course was to try and expose a corrupt government system which drains monies at every available instance. A little too late in the day to talk about this Mr.Priyadarshan coz it has been beaten to death. Tata Tea does a better job in under 60 seconds with each one of their Jaago Re campaign ads. Also, dear Mr. Priyadarshan please try and avoid the slapstick in your Hindi versions. If you can make much better / stronger movies in Malayalam which not only provide quality entertainment but also give a very solid message then why do you assume that the hindi movie goer does not have a bent of mind for serious cinema.

The acting throughout the movie is passé. AK really really really needs to take a long hard look into himself to see whether he would like to exit cinema with some respect left or bide his time some more and exit when he has no respect left. Trisha’s debut in Bollywood turns out to be a dampner. I don’t think she has dubbed for herself but at times u may be inclined to believe that she has especially when the accent heavily moves towards the one Hema Malini has in the Kent Aar Wo Purifier ad. The support cast has the usual suspects from Mr. Ps movies. Rajpal Yadav – please get a life. Manoj Joshi – capable of much more but relegated to some sidey role as the brother in law. You can do much better than playing a role of a sadak chhap Tharki. Johnny Lever was probably the only saving grace in his 6 mins and 48.5 seconds of screen time but there were moments where u would be inclined to think that Johnny bhai was really not interested in doing this movie.

Net Net Khatta Meetha was an experience worth forgetting. Keeping aside the fact that Trisha’s earnings were as big as the screen or the fact that she was a municipal commissioner wearing silk south Indian kancheepuram sarees in Satara or that girls in satara have started showing the bra strap as fashionably as they would in Mumbai or outside the country or the fact that the Computer animated elephant really appeared computer animated – it was still a bad bad experience. I would be kind if I were to give this movie 2 on 10. Clearly Ms. Kazmi has been bought out.