Close Call

Karthik calling Karthik
Cast Farhan Akhtar, Deepika Padukone, Ram Kapoor and Shefali Chaya
Director Vijay Lalwa
Rating TBA

Mysterious telephone calls play a pivotal part in Karthik Calling Karthik. Karthik Narayan (Akhtar), an introvert, lacks self-confidence and performs below-average at his job which is why his boss, Kamath (Kapoor), treats him badly. Karthik's beautiful colleague Shonali (Padukone) doesn't even know he exists.

His life takes a dramatic turn when he gets a mysterious call from someone who claims to be Karthik. The voice at the end of the line tells him that he wants to change his personality. Eventually through phone mentoring, Karthik becomes very confident and manages to win over Shonali. However, just when everything seems to go smoothly, things change.

The urban milieu

Akhtar seems to always view unconventional subjects with a commercial Bollywood perspective, whether it's his directorial efforts (Dil Chahta Hai and Lakshya) or his roles in films (Rock On and Luck By Chance). "Most of my films have an urban appeal simply because of the experiences that I had while growing up in Mumbai. The films I've produced also had similar scripts that were based on the individual experiences of the writer/director. I'm open to doing films with rural themes but they should have solid scripts which I can relate to," he says.

In Karthik Calling Karthik, Deepika Padukone plays an independent modern woman, similar to the characters she played in Bachna Ae Haseeno and Love Aaj Kal.

"Shonali Mukherjee is a very confident modern woman, but her character is entirely different from Gayathri of Bachna Ae Haseeno or Meera from Love Aaj Kal, who were vulnerable," explains Padukone. Padukone cut her hair to get a new look and also changed her style in clothes. Her character is also a smoker, something she hasn't done before.

Karthik Calling Karthik once again teams up Akhtar with his favourite trio of music composers, Shankar-Ehsan-Loy who have always delivered good music in Akhtar's films.