REVIEW: Khichdi The Movie

POTLUCK

At least, filmmakers are looking in different directions for inspiration—Khichdi The Movie is the first  television sitcom to be adapted into a movie in India.  Friends, or Sex In The City it ain’t but the film, written and directed by Aatish Kapadia who also created the sitcom, has its share of madcap moments.

The characters in the series--the ineffectual patriarch and his idiotic brood--have all the quirks of a Gujarati family, even though people as moronic as these would be difficult to imagine—or rather imagine a whole lot of Rowen Atkinsons and Jim Careys on speed, but dressed in Indian costumes.

Kapadia has the ability to wring humour out of the most mundane situations and every line has a pun popping out.  If it also had better production values and a coherent plot, the film might actually have been trendsetter.  Not having seen a single episode of the serial, one has no way of gauging whether it is faithful to the original or not, but as a standalone entity, this khichdi needed a lot more salt and pepper—or why not simply watch reruns of the episodes at home.  The idea of getting Himanshu (JD Majethia) a bride along with a memorable love story is too thin to stretch over a full-length film.

The positive thing is that some of the very good comic actors in here would never have got an opportunity to star in a film. Supriya Pathak, Rajeev Mehta and JD Majethia are hilarious.  And the film, in spite of its over the top silliness, is amusing in parts.  It actually looks like a large part of the low budget must have been spent on junior artistes in low rent finery, because so many scenes are simply overpopulated with garishly dressed people.  Like the 65-member Punjabi family next door to the Patels, all called Parminder!