Tag Archives: Kathal

Movie Review: Kathal – A Jackfruit Mystery (2023)

2.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Kathal on Netflix

A young police inspector in a small town navigates challenges in her professional and personal life in the comedy Kathal: A Jackfruit Mystery. Writer-director Yashowardhan Mishra gets a lot right in his feature debut, even though the story loses focus as it goes on.

Sanya Malhotra plays Mahima Basor, a police inspector in the small town of Moba. She’s achieved a lot in her short career and her superiors are pleased with her work, but some of the male constables who work under her quietly resent taking orders from a woman.

Further complicating matters is that one of those constables is her boyfriend, Saurabh Dwivedi (Anant Joshi). He supports Mahima’s career success, but his dad refuses to let them marry until Saurabh is promoted to inspector, too.

Fresh off Mahima’s arrest of a notorious gangster, she is assigned an even more important case — find the thief who stole two jackfruits off the tree in politician Munnalal Pateria’s (Vijay Raaz) garden. These aren’t just any jackfruits. They’re a special Uncle Hong variety that pickles exceptionally well.

Everyone except Pateria realizes what a ridiculous misuse of police resources this endeavor is. It’s funny to watch Mahima roll her eyes in the background as the investigation stirs up lingering resentments between Pateria and his son-in-law, which gets everyone else in the family involved.

This is when the story is at its best — as an interpersonal comedy that happens at an intimate scale, in a town small enough where everyone knows each other’s business. For example, no detail of the theft is too small for enthusiastic local reporter Anuj (Rajpal Yadav), who has little other news to cover.

Kathal loses its way when it expands the story beyond Moba’s borders into other villages, and the investigation uncovers more serious crimes. Pateria’s family recedes in importance, which is a shame because the characters and their influence over the town make the movie a lot of fun.

The plot gets diluted as the scope broadens. While the crime at the heart of the jackfruit case is trivial, what it reveals about power and police accountability is not. Same goes for the conflict that arises within Mahima’s relationship with Saurabh.

The introduction of weightier material doesn’t make Kathal any more important of a film. It was important already. Kathal is very close to being a very good movie. But the escalation in its latter stages overextends the runtime and distracts from the characters and a location that made up such an enjoyable, well-defined world.

Links

Streaming Video News: May 5, 2023

I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Netflix with this week’s surprise addition of the 2023 Ranbir Kapoor-Shraddha Kapoor romantic comedy Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar. A bunch of Telugu titles were added as well, including Amrutham Chandamamalo, Rowdy Fellow, Thammudu, Three, Yogi, and the 2023 theatrical release Meter.

Weirdly, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani is temporarily unavailable after having just been added to Netflix on March 15. It’s set to return May 31. A handful of Indian titles will expire from Netflix over the next several weeks, including:

Netflix also dropped the trailer for the Original Hindi comedy Kathal, which debuts May 19:

I also updated my list of Bollywood movies on Hulu with yesterday’s premiere of the new Hindi series Saas, Bahu Aur Flamingo (also available in Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu). The service announced that the Hindi series The Night Manager returns June 30.

Finally, I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Amazon Prime with the addition of the Malayalam film Enthadaa Saji and the debut of the new comedy special Biswa Kalyan Rath’s Mood Kharaab. Amazon released the trailer for the Hindi thriller series Dahaad, which premieres May 12. It looks pretty good:

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Streaming Video News: September 26, 2022

I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Netflix with links to teasers for all of the titles featured in last weekend’s Tudum event. You can watch recaps of all of the global Tudum events on Netflix itself (India’s segment is hosted by Anil Kapoor), or you can watch a video of the full Netflix India event hosted by Prajakta Koli and Zakir Khan on Netflix India’s YouTube page.

Unfortunately, no release dates were announced at the Tudum event. While every other show or movie got a new official teaser, Monica, O My Darling got a music video. If I had to bet, that’s the one I’d pick as next to release. Here are all of the shows that got new promo material:

In other Netflix news, @CinemaRareIN on Twitter found a bunch of other UTV titles set to expire from Netflix on October 1 beyond the initial list I posted on September 2. The new batch makes a total of 28 titles on their way out in the next week. Update your watch priorities accordingly.

Here are all the additional titles expiring from Netflix October 1, with titles I’ve reviewed at the top followed by other titles in alphabetical order:

Netflix Women’s Day 2022 News

In honor of International Women’s Day, the Netflix India Twitter account drew special attention to six upcoming projects with strong women characters, including some new photos. The account tweeted about the recently announced films Kathal, Thar, and Qala, as well as the upcoming second seasons of Masaba Masaba and She. Most exciting was a tweet about the forthcoming series Mai, which was announced a couple of years ago and hasn’t gotten much attention since. All of the titles were mentioned as “coming soon,” so here’s hoping that’s true.

Netflix recently brought together a bunch of the women filmmakers and actors responsible for the streamer’s biggest Indian hits to film a promotional video for Netflix and take questions from the media. Friend of Access Bollywood Suchin Mehrotra was at the event reporting for The Hindu, and Anupama Chopra recorded a video interview for Film Companion. Check it out:

As if this wasn’t enough, yesterday Netflix revealed that Alia Bhatt’s first foray into Hollywood will be a role in the Netflix Original film Heart of Stone, starring Gal Gadot and Jamie Dornan. Exciting stuff!