‘Do Patti’ Netflix Movie Review - Kriti Sanon, Kajol in a Bad Romantic Thriller

With Do Patti, Kriti Sanon debuts as a producer, and you can see how much she strains herself to offer a "meaningful experience" to the audience. She has a lot of fans to please. There are girls who might consider her a role model. Sanon, then, cannot give them something lightweight, something casual, now that she has the power to tell a story of her choice in a way she wants. The more power the actors get, the more they end up believing that they have something important to say to the audience. But what about the medium through which they communicate their message? It isn't always treated with respect. Filmmakers shabbily insert some progressive (sub)text within their shabby films and think they have done great work. They don't look very different from those Social Media Warriors who think their half-baked tweets would rid society of all evils. With Do Patti, Sanon wants to talk about domestic violence. If she had been serious about this subject, she wouldn't have produced a movie written by Kanika Dhillon. Dhillon is not a bad writer. It's just that she belongs to a pulpy universe, and when she dives into her domain with conviction, you get the pleasure of watching an incredibly demented dark romance like Haseen Dillruba. The shades of that 2021 romantic thriller are detected here when you once again find a woman and a police officer inside a police station. Do Patti, however, is not as stimulating as Haseen Dillruba. It shoots itself in the foot by carrying the burden of a social message.

What's that message? It has something to do with breaking the cycle of abuse - women's empowerment. It Ends With Us recently addressed the same theme, but you don't need to go to Hollywood for this example when we have films like Stree 2 and Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video in India. Bollywood's idea of feminism is quite shallow. Filmmakers express their support for women by either having a male character break into a speech or by putting male rage into female characters. Mediocre minds produce mediocre productions, and this mediocrity is widely celebrated by a mediocre audience. People hate servile female characters - women with no personality or personal ambitions who sacrifice their lives to care for men. But sell them the same package through an angry female lead, and they will hail the movie as "path-breaking," call it a "celebration of female rage," and whatnot (I am, of course, talking about Jigra). Do Patti's idea of girl power is also thin, silly, and laughable. On one side, it wants women to recognize red flags in men and break out of their influence, and on the other, it sees its female lead through a male gaze and sexualizes her. Shailee (Kriti Sanon) is a product of male fantasy - a girl in shorts who shamelessly makes sexual gestures and passes flirty remarks. If Shailee is a man's wet dream, then Saumya (Sanon again) is someone he dreams of when sober. When Dhruv (Shaheer Sheikh) is told to find a homely wife, he chooses Saumya. She speaks softly, is meek, and dutifully completes all the household chores. Saumya is the kind of woman incels fantasize about marrying because they exude a virginal shyness.

Shailee and Saumya dress and behave differently, but both have one thing in common: They have a terrible taste in men - they are dumb. Do Patti simply reinforces an incel's notion that bad boys attract all the women (a girl who's fat-shamed early in the film looks seductively at Dhruv). Also, by creating a hostile mood between the sisters, the movie strengthens that belief about women's worst enemies being other women (given that all men in Do Patti are either monsters or sorely incompetent, the women also end up being each other's friends). This sentiment unintentionally finds its way into the scenes involving Kajol, which are, ahem, written by Dhillon. The writer gives the actor some of the most terribly lame scenes you will see in a film this year. As a cop named Vidya Jyothi (or VJ for people who want to save their precious two seconds), Kajol looks uncomfortable. She struggles to be a comic relief because comedy doesn't come easily to her. So she does what a hack would do to tickle your funny bone: Overact and make "funny faces." As soon as a superior officer mentions that Vidya's surname means light, the electricity goes off. And when Vidya gets stuck in the doorway, she moans that she always gets stuck in her job, stuck with patrol duty, stuck wrestling with the Indian penal code, and stuck living up to her parents' ideals. The lowest point, however, for this character has to be those scenes where she makes voice notes. Forget women's empowerment; the film's concept of humor is dreadful.

Do Patti is Shashanka Chaturvedi's directorial debut, and he doesn't do anything remarkable. The paragliding sequences are impersonally shot. They don't convey a sense of thrill or fear. The green screen becomes apparent when the camera gets close to the flying characters. But it's Chaturvedi's handling of a domestic violence scene that really leaves a bad taste in your mouth. As Dhruv physically assaults Saumya, sentimental music is played so that we can grasp that whatever's happening on the screen is extremely sad and painful. Such manipulative tricks are used by hacks to force a reaction out of the audience. What's worse is Dhillon's compulsion to put in Mahabharata references. They don't mix well with this cheesy material. And did we really need a man screaming, "High court mein appeal karenge sir! Inn auraton ko dekh lenge!" Yes, we get it. These men are assholes. No one asked for such a lame reminder. And yet, I was shocked as well as amused by the film's climax. If only this were a compliment. I don't know how creatively bankrupt or how bad a writer you must be to come up with such an atrocious courtroom scene. While watching it, I screamed, "Read the room, guys. This is not the place for dispensing sob stories and social messaging." Or at least this is not how you execute drama on the screen.

Sanon, as Shailee, might be the only good thing about Do Patti. The actor gets to unleash her naughty side, which knows it belongs in a gloriously bad movie. Sadly, the movie doesn't want to embrace its trashy identity. It wants to be taken seriously. Hence, Sanon's Shailee becomes a bore after a while. Her free-spirited energy gets diluted by the dour, dull mood of the movie. Since Do Patti is produced and written by women, it might score some brownie points for celebrating women. This is the kind of gimmick Bollywood mainly adopts to present itself as progressive. When you are short on ideas and filmmaking skills, you become a shrewd businessman and cover your clumsy product with a wrapper that looks shiny and appealing (Do Patti promises to be an intriguing romance/thriller/mystery. The press notes say that "the gripping drama unveils the grey areas of truth and morality"). The only truth this "gripping" drama unveils is that it's hollow from within. Do Patti fails to deliver its message effectively, and it never manages to become a gloriously bad movie. What a pity.

Final Score- [3/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times