DO PATTI, BUT EK NA CHALI!
Do Patti scores top marks for me as one of the worst A-lister Hindi films I have seen in recent times. I like both Kriti Sanon and Kajol as very capable actors, but Do Patti is that one film that sticks out as a missed opportunity all round. Unimaginative writing and direction cannot be saved even by good actors, as this movie proves once again.

The film opens with the ‘attempted murder’ of a woman by her husband in dramatic, very cliched Hindi-movie fashion. Police office Vidya (Kajol) swings into action, determined to solve the case and find evidence that the woman, Saumya (Kriti) is an ongoing victim of domestic abuse at the hands of her rich, spoilt, son-of-a-businessman-with-major-political-connections husband Dhruv, played to mediocre perfection by Shaheer Sheikh. Vidya convinces Saumya’s Maaji (the mother-figure played by a severely underutilised Tanvi Azmi) to gather evidence, but not without a long story about Saumya’s childhood and early trauma at the hands of Shailee, who is well, wait-for-it… her ‘evil’ twin sister, also played by Kriti.

To cut a long, insipid, story short, we then suffer through a string of poorly done scenes of flashback and other assorted weariness with Kajol trying to pull off some sort of Mare of Easttown Kate Winslet gravitas that proves unsurprisingly elusive, and Kriti trying to outdo herself in the roles of the emotionally contrasting sisters. About Dhruv and Maaji, the less said the better. Unfortunately, nothing they do in the movie saves it from spiralling into a very predictable mess of a lost opportunity. The scenes are marred by very amateurish writing that is reflected in how the characters only do and say the exact thing that moves the plot forward, making them boringly unidimensional. The narrative does the bare minimum to keep things going with nothing fleshed out, not even the action in each scene.

Anyway, without giving away more details and the crucial twist in the tale, let’s just say the movie then ends. Thankfully.

I almost forgot to add some details. Towards the end, the story becomes a crusade by Vidya the cop, who now is also a lawyer (how convenient), against domestic abuse. There are a few courtroom scenes thrown in for good measure so that she can wax eloquent about the subject. A few lines of on-screen text then sends a socially-relevant message to all viewers.

Give it a miss, unless you have something else to do. A household chore is ideally suited for this; to have it running in the background… to peep at once in a while, when you hear something loud. You know what I’m talking about!