Karthik Calling Karthik

Karthik Calling Karthik
File:Karthik Calling Karthik pic.jpg Promotional poster for the film
Directed by	Vijay Lalwani
Written by	Vijay Lalwani
Produced by	Ritesh Sidhwani Farhan Akhtar
Starring	Farhan Akhtar Deepika Padukone Ram Kapoor Shefali Shah Vipin Sharma
Music by	Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy
Distributed by	Excel Entertainment Pvt. Ltd.
Release date	26 February 2010
Running time	155 Minutes
Country	India
Languages	Hindi English

Karthik Calling Karthik is a Hindi language film, written and directed by NISITH DASH and produced by Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani under the banner of Excel Entertainment. The film stars Farhan Akhtar and Deepika Padukone in lead roles. Ram Kapoor and Shefali Shah play supporting roles in the film. The film's music was composed by the trio of Shankar Ehsaan Loy, while the background score was composed by Midival Punditz and Karsh Kale.

Plot

Karthik (Farhan Akhtar) is an introvert who lacks confidence in dealing with everyday life situations and feels trapped in his average job at a construction company, that produces even lesser than average results as he is continuously troubled by an incident of his childhood. His elder brother, Kumar, used to torture him, but whenever he complained to his parents about him, they did not believe him. One day, Kumar took Karthik to show him some beautiful tourist spot, and took him to a well, trying to throw him in it, but Karthik escaped. Kumar next tried to tie him with rope but accidentally fell inside the well and died. Karthik thought himself to be responsible for his brother's death. Shonali Mukherjee (Deepika Padukone) is a co-worker at Karthik's company.

Karthik’s boss Kamath (Ram Kapoor) and landlord treat him extremely negatively, often humiliating and disrespecting him, and Karthik has to put up with these insults on a daily basis purely on account of his inability to counter them strongly. Shonali, on the other hand, portrays for Karthik, an independent, classy and confident woman, who remains unaware of his secret love for her, much less his existence even though he's worked at the company for close to 4 years. Karthik attempts to email her his feelings very regularly, but on each occasion, stops himself and saves the mails in his Drafts folder, as he concludes that Shonali is dating his co-worker Ashish.

After being derided by his boss yet again, he figures that his life can’t get any better and decides to commit suicide by consuming sleeping pills. At the exact moment that he is about to consume the sleeping pills, the phone rings and a stranger, having the same voice as him, tells him that he is also Karthik , and that he is his well wisher. By and by, Karthik finds that this stranger can exactly locate his psyche, state of mind and emotional levels and come up with solutions that can make things better. The caller convinces him that he has the ability to change him, if he strictly follows his guidelines. The caller expressly tells Karthik that he should not mention his phone conversations to anyone, lest he will be perceived as mentally ill. Karthik agrees to keep the phone conversations to himself.

Gradually these phone conversations become his life guide. His chats take place every morning at 5:00 am and the caller provides advice on every problem that arises in Karthik's life. The caller keeps a close eye on his life, guides him to become a successful man and win his secret love, Shonali (by making Ashish reveal in front of Shonali that he had a wife and a 6 year old son in Delhi) and eventually enables him to bring color to his otherwise monotonous and unremarkable existence .

One day, when Karthik and Shonali were together, Shonali tells him that he should tell her everything, and not hide anything from her, be it costing anything. He tells Shonali about the mysterious caller, but Shonali does not believe him and asks him to consult a doctor.

The night when he receives the call, the caller asked him to lie to Shonali and told him not to consult a doctor. The next day he lies to Shonali, but she catches it. karthik said he would definitely go to consult a doctor. When he goes to his psychiatrist, she asks her if she could come to his house and check the call at 5 am. When she arrives at Karthik's house, the phone rang and the same voice told her that it existed whether she believed it or not and when she heard it, the cup from whch she was drinking coffee, fell down. Karthik got up and when to get a wipe to clean it, and when he came back in the room, he saw that there was nobody and the door was open.

The next day he tells Shonali that he consulted a doctor, but she ran away. Shonali does not believe him and says that she will herself stay with him and see the calls arriving. The phone again rings in front of her also but she stops Karthik from receiving them. The phone eventually stops ringing.

Karthik receives the calls again the next morning, and the caller warns him that if he could bring him up, then he could throw him down also, and says that he would destroy everything. When he goes to the office, his boss throws him out of the office telling that he called him last night and black mailed him that he would tell his wife about his affair if he sold illegal land. While he was moving out, he meets Shonali who tells him that he called her last night and made fun of her. He tries to tell her that he did not do anything but she does not listen. Karthik thought that he should go some where which even he would not know, and so he gets a pair of opaque black glasses and asked an old man at the railway station to get him a railway ticket but not tell him the place the train was going. He wore his glasses and sat in the train pretending to be blind. He thinks that he himself won't know where he is, then how would the caller know? He goes down the train on the station and asks the driver of his cab to take him to any small hotel of the area. When he reaches there, he asks the receptionist to remove the telephone, room number plate.

SPOILER ALERT!

After the passing of a few months, Karthik is comfortably living in a small town. His life is back to normal with respect to work and other elements except for the fact that he refuses to have a phone line. However, upon his boss's request, he is forced to purchase a land line but goes to great lengths to ensure that he himself is unaware of the number. but purchases the same model that he had earlier.

After a day of restless sleep, he is glad that no calls come through and takes this as a sign that those events will not occur again. But the next day, at exactly 5am he receives a call from Karthik, who tells him that he has found him and will now find a way to Kill him. In the meantime, he has contacted Shonali and even intends to meet up with her one day. She is contacted by Dr. Kapadia who explains that Karthik is Schizophrenic. He has an alter ego that is more assertive and advises him on what to do and how to live life. And he has been dealing with this condition from a young age when he created a fake brother. Turns out that the Phone Model that he purchased has the capacity to record messages and act as a playback feature at a certain time. And these functions work regardless of whether a phone is plugged in and the messages can also be sent to other numbers. This explains the voice on the other line. He would wake up in the middle of the night, leave himself messages in the alter ego state and then go to sleep.

Eventually, Karthik is so disturbed that he attempts to commit suicide by ingesting sleeping pills, but Shonali arrives at the right time to save him. After a few months, Karthik is in the process of dealing with his schizophrenia and has Shonali's help in living a happy and rehabilitated life.

Cast

Actor	Role
Farhan Akhtar	Karthik
Deepika Padukone	Shonali Mukherjee
Ram Kapoor	Raj Kamath
Vivan Bhatena	Ashish
Vipin Sharma	Karthik's landlord
Yatin Karyekar	Karthik's boss at Cochin
Shefali Shah	Dr.Kapadia
Umesh Tonpe	as an Office Friend

Crew

• Director: Vijay Lalwani
• Producer: Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani
• Associate Producers: Amit Chandra and Vijay Lalwani
• Editor: Aarti Bajaj
• Writer: Vijay Lalwani
• Sound Design: Baylon Fonseca
• Costumes: Niharika Khan
• Executive Producer: Miriam Joseph
• Publicity Designers: Rahul Nanda and Himanshu Nanda
• Music: Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy
• Background Score: Midival Punditz and Karsh Kale
• Lyrics: Javed Akhtar
• Cinematography: Sanu Varghese

Production

In an effort to prepare for his role as loner introvert Karthik, Farhan Akhtar isolated himself at home and school and turned off his phone. He also learned to solve the Rubik's Cube, an activity which his character completes in only one try.

Release

The film was released on 26 February 2010.

Critical reception

Nikhat Kazmi of Times of India rated it 3.5 out of 5, calling it "immensely watchable, purely for the class act by Farhan Akhtar in the title role". Desi Hits gave 3.5 out of 5, saying that "Karthik Calling Karthik" to all because it is a unique movie with an interesting twist. Our hero and heroine perform outstandingly and all the supporting cast is quite commendable too." Noyon Jyoti Parasara of AOL.in also gave it a thumbs up and rated it 3 out of 5. He wrote, "The film certainly gives us one director in Vijay Lalwani whose work we could look forward to as he shows his potential in this film. ".

Shweta Parande of IBNLive.com gave a rating of 3.5 out of 5, by applauding the cast and crew for their performances and their efforts on building up the story as a team. IndiaGlitz gave a 3 out of 5, concluding "Go but with an open mind."

The Times of India - [1] Navbharat Times: [2] AOL: [3]

Box office

Karthik Calling Karthik performed moderately well at the box office, despite the presence of two other films - My Name Is Khan, which was running in its third weekend, and Teen Patti, which released simultaneously. It grossed INR 27.5 million net on its first day of release. The film has done better at high end multiplexes enabling the film to have average collections on its first day.KCK did a net business of approximately Rs 110 million (Rs 11 crore) at the box office in India in four days.After first week, The film grossed 13,39,00,000.

Soundtrack

Untitled

The music is composed by the composer-trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and lyrics is penned by Javed Akhtar

Track #	Song	Singer(s)	Duration
1	Uff Teri Adaa	Alyssa Mendonsa & Shankar Mahadevan	5:06
2	Hey Ya!	Clinton Cerejo, Shankar Mahadevan	4:17
3	Jaane Ye Kya Hua	KK	4:10
4	Kaisi Hai Yeh Udaasi	Kailash Kher & Sukanya Purayastha	6:07
5	Karthik Calling Karthik	Suraj Jaggan, Shankar Mahadevan, Caralisa Monteiro	3:11
6	Karthik 2.0	MIDIval Punditz, Karsh Kale	4:15
7	Uff Teri Adaa (Remix)	Alyssa Mendonsa, Shankar Mahadevan & Loy Mendonsa	4:06
8	Hey Ya! (Remix)	Clinton Cerejo, Shankar Mahadevan	5:17
9	Karthik Calling Karthik Theme Remix	MIDIval Punditz, Karsh Kale	3:11

Though the album did not receive overwhelming response from critics, the album, especially Uff Teri Adaa created waves and topped the charts.. At the box office, music had an impact in the opening of the film, as it got bigger opening than it's competitor Teen Patti..

External links

• Official website
• Karthik Calling Karthik at IMDb