When the makers of Bollywood film Batti Gul Meter Chalu starring Shahid Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor released the film’s trailer, there was a lot of speculation regarding the plot being a copy of Pakistani film Actor in Law. While power outage is a socially relevant topic and a common problem on both sides of the border, many felt Batti Gul Meter Chalu was unoriginal since Fahad Mustafa and Mehwish Hayat’s film had already highlighted the problem.
Read More: The makers of Actor in Law are not too happy about the idea of ‘not giving due credit’
To see if it was really ‘inspired’ or in other words ‘copied’, we watched the film only hoping to be interrupted by a power shutdown in the cinema. Yes, it was that hard to sit through the entire movie that showed no spark at all. Long story short; the film takes almost 1.5 hours to build what the trailer revealed in three minutes.
Batti Gul Meter Chalu narrates the story of three childhood buddies, Shahid, who plays SK — a cunning lawyer, Divyendu Sharma, who is his simple friend Tripathi and Shraddha, who plays Lalita Nautiyal — an ambitious designer with a bizarre fashion sense.
Lalita, also referred to as naughty, is looking for a husband. She decides to choose between the two best friends by dating both for a week each before passing a judgment. Obviously, this leads to friction in the otherwise unbreakable bond.
To make things worse, we are made to listen to songs with lyrics like, ‘When you gettin’ gold why go for tamba, when you getting Gabbar why go for Samba.â€
The film talks about flickering bulbs, power shortage, skyrocketing bills and the added expense of a generator, since the beginning. However, the issue builds post interval, which is when an incident shifts the story’s focus towards social activism. SK decides to put up a fight and the film’s narrative changes from a confused romance to a courtroom drama full of sexist and distasteful humour between SK and the representative of the giant power corporation played by Yami Gautam.
Despite releasing a promising trailer, the movie fails to captivate the audience as it should have. In other words, it’s a missed opportunity and a waste of resources. Weak script and the language barrier makes the otherwise important film, unbearable which is actually sad. There is a disturbing overuse of words “Bal” and “Thehra” which, despite being a part of the local dialect, starts to annoy you after a point.
Our very own Actor in Law managed to create a more lasting impression with only one small segment regarding power outages in the film. Had the makers of Batti Gul Meter Chalu really taken inspiration from Actor In Law, they would’ve made a more engaging and entertaining movie.
Rating : 2/5
