Khichdi - The Movie Movie Review: Khichdi The Movie: Giggly Treat, Distinct Flavour

It's not often that a Hindi teleserial is made into a movie. But writer director Aatish Kapadia takes that step with the very popular "Khichdi serial, recreating that comedy in a movie format. The film stays absolutely faithful to the serial with the same whacky Gujarati family and its mad denizens.

Its characters, like Jaishree, Hansa, Babuji, Praful and Himanshu are by now household names. 'Khichdi The Movie', takes off from the serial itself, albeit with a new story. Like the TV show, the film too offers a mix of the comic and the ridiculous, at times even bordering on stupidity. But the end result is a lot of laughter, like the show itself. The film rides on the popularity of the show and the cult status that its characters have acquired. And the resulting 'khichdi' that is cooked up, actually turns out to be quite palatable.

As most those who would have watched the serial would know, the dumb Hansa bhabhi (Supriya Pathak), the wife of the equally dumb Praful (Rajeev Mehta), has an equally stupid brother called Himanshu (JD). The movie's story centres around Himanshu, who suddenly acquires this ridiculous ambition of having a memorable love affair. By a stroke of luck, their next door Punjabi neighbour, Parminder (Kirti Kulhari) falls in love with Himanshu and the duo gets engaged and plans to get married.

But Himanshu is hellbent on fulfilling his desire to have a legendary love story. In contrast, his real life love story is quite boring and staid, and nowhere matches the high drama which characterises all such love sagas. The entire family now pitches in to make his dream come true by making creating all kinds of obstacles to stall the wedding.

The entire Parekh family, with the exception of Babuji (Anang Desai) is as dumb as dumb can get and seem to revel in their stupidity. The movie is full of all kinds of bizarre and absurd situations which the family gets into, thus giving rise to the humour. Obviously, the film has no serious moment and everything, even death, is treated as a joke.

As with all comedies, it is the script which plays a major role. Where Khichdi is concerned, however, the screenplay, is slightly weak and uneven in tone. But there are some memorable sequences like the death scene of JD and Hansa's father and the climax in the courtroom.

However, what really carries the movie forward is the acting prowess of the performers. Kapadia, the director, manages to rein in his actors well and extracts a very good performance from them. Supriya and Mehta lead the proceedings with their flawless sense of comic timing and are a treat to watch.

They are very well supported by Desai, JD and Nimisha Vakharia, who comes in place of Vandana Pathak. The cameos by Deven Bhojani, Farah Khan and Satish Shah are quite endearing. Just like the title itself, the film is not a one man show but a collective effort by the entire cast, all of who work beautifully in tandem to create a 'khichdi'.

On the whole, the movie manages to keep the laughs going from the first sequence itself. 'Khichdi' may not be one of your clever comedies, but it still proves to be a lot of fun.