If you are someone who loves to watch movies that are really out of the box than Karthik Calling Karthik is one movie that you should not miss out. Time and again Farhan Akhtar along with Ritesh Sidhwani have proved that Bollywood has the potential of making movies that are way above the normal the regular masala flicks. Karthik Calling Karthik does not give out a very loud impression and you might feel that this movie would be a drag, but believe me you will change your mind while you are watching the movie because the movie has so much to offer you than what you have seen in the promos. In fact, none of the promos even give us a hint that this movie is a psychological thriller with an absolutely mind-boggling suspense that will force you to think harder subconsciously.
The plot is very simple where our main protagonist, Karthik (Farhan Akhtar) is a very shy and reserved guy who reminds me of Amol Palekar in Chhoti Si Baat. He is a complete loser with shattered self-confidence and finds himself trapped between daily life challenges and a job where his boss and colleagues never treat him equally qualified, though he has a good educational background. Shonali Mukherjee (Deepika Padukone) is exactly the opposite of Karthik and she is an extrovert who loves to enjoy life as it comes. Karthik is attracted towards Shonali because of her free nature but is unable to express his feelings. Karthik takes help of a psychiatrist Mrs. Kapadia (Shefali Shah) and he tells her that in his childhood his elder brother would always bully him and once his elder brother tried to play a prank on him by pushing him into a well, but accidentally his elder brother slipped and died in the well and from very that moment he feels guilty that it was his mistake that his brother died. However, this consultation doesn’t help him much and Karthik feels that he is unable to take the pressure and decides to commit a suicide by consuming sleeping pills, but just when he is about to do that, he receives a call. He picks up the call and finds that the person on the other side is him, Karthik. The other Karthik calms him down and encourages him to be confident and guides him on how to tackle office pressure and attract Shonali towards him. The real Karthik follows his commands obediently and things begin to turn upside down. He gets a promotion at work and Shonali falls in love with Karthik. However, the voice on the phone instructs him to keep their conversations secret because people will not understand the logic, but Karthik shares this information with Shonali and Mrs. Kapadia and things begin to turn upside down again for Karthik. What follows next is a gripping truth that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
If you are looking for latka-jhatka entertainment than please don’t go for this movie, but if you like to watch a brilliant script executed superbly than Karthik Calling Karthik will definitely keep you occupied. The story looks very slow at times but this is only because of the nature of Karthik. You remembered how Dil Chahta Hai slowed down everytime Akshay Khanna came up on the screen? Though, many movie critics have given Karthik Calling Karthik a poor rating, I would say that those people never want Hindi cinema to present something innovative.
Like Luck By Chance and Rock On, Farhan Akhtar once again proves that he has the ability to take the load of the entire movie. Of course, Deepika does give out a good performance this time, but you cannot imagine Karthik Calling Karthik without Farhan. Ram Kapoor as a typical nagging boss does a brilliant job and Vipin Sharma as Ashish does a decent job as well. Shefali Shah does her role of psychiatrist brilliantly. So far I haven’t mentioned anything about the direction but I must admit that Vijay Lalwani has done a fantastic job on direction, screenplay, story and dialogues. I wonder any director in Hindi film industry must have made such an intelligent use of a Rubik’s Cube the way it is done in this movie. Music by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy is good and different. However, what works for this movie is an incredibly awesome background score by Midival Punditz and Karsh Kale. Some of the scenes in the movie look gripping only because of the background score and witty dialogues. Javed Akhtar provides good lyrics to the songs which help the flow of the movie.
In the end, I would like to say - Don’t Miss This Call.