Katti Batti Leaves Kangana Tamed And You, Frustrated

As prolific as Nikhil Advani is as a filmmaker, what is depressing is that he doesn't seem to have grown as a director from the larger number of films he's made. With Katti Batti, his dated sensibilities clash with a premise that may have presumably seemed modern on paper.


Kangana Ranaut plays Payal, a free-spirited, Europe-strutting fashionista, the kind "jo normal ladkon ko ghaas bhi nahi daalti." But how do we know she's free-spirited? As a supporting character helpfully points out, she's never stuck to a career choice and has tried everything from being a singer to a model to an architect. The character - of Imran's sister - also points out that she's very 'chaloo.' That's perhaps substantiated by her having 1500 friends on Facebook.


But chaloo Payal shows interest in our nerdy Maddy (Imran Khan) and the two get high on the idea of living in together. In a film claiming to be the quintessential modern romance, the leads do not have sex until the first two years of their relationship, until they move in together. That's the live-in equivalent of sex after marriage. Nothing wrong with it other than the fact that this generation is more about Tinder and less about taking-it-slow.

That's the problem with Katti Batti. It feels too artificial and too manipulative! Kangana almost looks disinterested in her own performance. And weirdly enough, she is relegated to the background - the film largely revolves around Imran with Kangana filling in the gaps. Sadly, Imran is trapped by his own limitations as a performer, an act that can easily be confused for Break Ke Baad, Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na or even Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu.


Still, he's not the worst part about the film which has an over-the-top boss in Bugs Bhargava who gives South Indian stereotype a new meaning, a cleavage-baring hot secretary whose only purpose is to accentuate her breasts when the camera is on her, and characters who themselves say, "Yeh live-in relationship thoda weird hai na."

The film is also confused in what it wants to be. It tries to be funny in a slapstick way which just doesn't work on the humour level while there is weird, unsatisfying mystery element which seems too sappy. Like Kal Ho Na Ho reversed. So the movie ends up becoming a schizophrenic cousin of 500 Days Of Summer and Love And Other Drugs - both beautiful films on the anguish of unfulfilled love.


In what should have ideally been a soul-stirring drama on the broken heart's inability to let go and the inevitability of moving on, Katti Batti becomes an absurdist comedy where the characters appear so far away from you, it breaks your heart to not feel for them. And that is a love story's biggest undoing.