Review: 'Khatta Meetha' is a tiresome dramedy

Khatta Meetha (U/A)
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Trisha, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Aruna Irani, Urvashi Sharma
Director: Priyadarshan
Rating: **

Khatta Meetha is Priyadarshan’s umpteenth attempt to serve up another of his southern comedies for the national audience. This film is a remake of his 1989 hit Malayalam film Velanakalude nadu, refitted but not exactly well suited.

The story is reset into a Maharashtrian household and the set-up is replete with a large joint family residing in a huge, square, traditional, Kerala-style bungalow. Chauvinistic men and mild-spirited women populate the script, as is the director's wont.

To top it all, Akshay Kumar plays an unlikely Sachin Tichkule, an adarshwadi who loses his way, becomes a civil contractor engaged in municipal work, adopts corrupt ways, gets himself heavily into debt, and finally finds his way back to his adarsh roots with some gentle persuasion from lady love Gehna (Trisha). There are quite a few subplots added on for complexity, but they only add to the general confusion.

Sachin is the younger son of a retired judge (Kharbanda) who is also a Gandhian. Sachin’s older brother and his two older sisters’ husbands are themselves extremely rich, corrupt contractors. Sachin’s youngest sister Anjali (Sharma) is married off to the local goon-turned-politician and ends up committing suicide.

There’s an attempt to falsify charges and another to expose corruption. Then there’s a property angle and plenty of in-house politics too... so there is no shortage of diversions, but none of them is interesting enough.

The narrative appears overpopulated with characters and there is a lot happening in terms of incidents and counter incidents, but there doesn’t appear to be any solid believable objective to the proceedings. The lead character seems to have so many character traits, both positive and negative, that we stop believing in him in the first few minutes.

Kumar’s struggling contractor act is extremely irritating and his character’s sudden bout of conscience towards the end appears manufactured. It is also quite impossible to believe that his ex-girlfriend Gehna, now municipal commissioner, whom he incessantly harasses to the point of her attempting suicide, can find it so easy to forgive him on the basis of a half-hearted, ill-worded apology.

The narrative is a continuous and incessantly shrill rant, but the audience will be hard-pressed to figure out what it’s all about. Priyadarshan’s lead character adopts corrupt ways when it suits him and also seeks to play holier than thou when confronted. It is totally confused writing and makes the entire experience ineffectual and frustrating.

The dialogues are rendered at ear-splitting volume, without a pause. The performances are also par for the course, so to speak, befitting Priyadarshan’s confused milieu.

Khatta Meetha was designed to be a satirical comedy, but ham-handed treatment, confounding ideology, and loud performances leave it well short on laughter and entertainment.