Review: Katti Batti - the movie

A few days ago, I went to see Katti Batti, a new movie from Bollywood. Directed by Nikhil Advani, this is the story of a man and a woman who meet in college, and go through twists and turns in their romantic life before learning the value of each other. The lead roles in this movie are played by Imran Khan and Kangana Ranaut.

Maddy (Imran) falls for a hep Payal (Kangana - imagine the irony here!) in college, when she appears in the most outlandish outfit ever known to grace a woman (see picture below). When he asks her her name from across a glass partition, she gently lifts up her long skirt and shows him her anklet. Wow ... what an imaginative charade!

The interaction between Payal, the "neglected" daughter of Page 3 socialite parents and Maddy (Madhav), the son of the usual kind of parents is enjoyable in the first half; the songs are beautifully picturised, the dialogue is kitsch, but a few scenes are really good (e.g. when Maddy has to push his non-starting bike all across the campus with Payal sitting atop it like a queen). 

Maddy's sister (Ms Irksome) creates the most cacophony in the movie. When, one fine day, Payal leaves the five year old live-in relationship house and goes away to a place unknown to Maddy, the otherwise effervescent romeo turns into a morose Majnu, moping the world over for his lost love. His attempts to track her down finally take him to her, but the denouement comes when Payal announces the reason for her running away. Eventually, tragedy triumphs, and a sort of meaning is added to the movie. 

When all the chips have fallen in place, you feel sympathy for all the actors! 

Rating: 6 *
Running all over India.

Review: Everest - The movie

Mount Everest has always beckoned people to try and conquer it, and reaching the pinnacle of this huge mountain is often equated with the biggest accomplishment anyone can have in this world in the field of adventure and thrill, in the field of endurance, stamina, courage and absolute exhilaration. 

This is a movie based on a true story. The year is 1996, and the story traces the adventure of two teams of Everest climbers led by the expedition head, their backup teams and support and the actual travellers who have paid money to these expeditions to reach the top of Mount Everest. The two teams are led by Robert Hall (played by Jason Clarke) (Adventure Consultants) and Scott Fisher (Jake Gyllenhaal) (Mountain Madness), and they come together for synergistic reasons. Some of their climbers include a mailman (Doug Hansen - John Hawkes) who is doing this for glory, a seasoned mountaineer (Beck Weathers - Josh Brolin), and a Japanese woman (Yasuko Namba - Naoko Mori) who has already scaled 6 summits and hopes to crown her experience with this, her 7th climb, to Everest. 

This story is a thriller all right. The camera work, special effects and the narrative story are top class. There are reports that the shooting was not only done in Nepal, but at several other places in the world, including the Alps in Italy and some studios in Rome and the U.S. 

The story starts on a positive note, and continues to remain hopeful until when the climbers reach the Hillary steps, a very narrow ledge on the way to the summit, where the leaders and guides have to perform the additional duty of installing fixed ropes before the climbers can go up; then, a storm begins to grow upon the climbers. The rest of the story is the real story of how the climbers and the guides had to battle the elements to survive; many perish, and some return successfully to tell their story to their family and to the world. 

See this movie if you love to see a technically well-made movie with a strong story line. It is filmed in 3D, but the movie had few moments to justify its 3D avatar. 

Rating: 4 *
Running at: Inox CR2, Nariman Point and IMAX Wadala,