Let's face it. The book is amazing but the film isn't. The film based on bestseller novel by Chetan Bhagat, "One night @ Call center" is also termed as pulp-fiction classic of modern Indian English Writing. The makers deserve an applause for looking beyond conventional Bollywood story lines backed by star-power and instead went for a popular book adaptation depicting a contemporary, burning issue about today's youth. It has everything viz. the conflicts, the love, the breakups, the struggle at various levels, the battle at various fronts and emerging a winner by the end. The basic plot in one line is-six agents working in a call center one night received a call straight from God. Interesting?? The original book though not a masterpiece but has enough material to keep readers glued till the last page and rightly balanced with some concrete message and moral.
There are though few things that worked in film adaptation. Firstly, choosing an interesting subject as film premise since here the plot itself has enough Masala that could give any Bollywood potboiler a run for its money. Collaborating with Chetan Bhagat on screenplay helped in covering all the key contents of the novel. Plus it insures a novelty in story telling. Also the basic plot and premise is not tampered with and is kept intact with an exception of including Salman Khan-Katrina Kaif's unnecessary characters instead of original ones, who are out of place but then being "Sutradhaars" they can't really hamper the narrative. Even the book has an over the top Climax when mammoth problems are resolved in a quick fix way making the boy-next-door central characters emerging as super-heroes. This film does not give you a glimpse of working in call center industry even the book also doesn't but book provides necessary backdrop as it was written with some homework. That homework is not done before filming.
Therefore, the positive things end here. Rest that follows is completely bizarre. It is quite inevitable not to compare the film with the book. Accepted that it is not an easy task to bring the mental state of characters of a novel so vividly described in novel to be brought out by sheer performances with limited spoken words. Firstly, the casting is gone wrong. Either Actors are not briefed properly or simply they did not get it but apart from two performances- Sharman Joshi (Good) and Gul Panag (Average) others just shuffle between high pitch drama to stupid humor with the drop of a hat. They look like they emerge straight from a street Play, including supporting cast of a Boss, a technical supervisor, heroine's mother etc-ranging from funny to caricatures to simply buffoons. The type of houses the agents live in or the type of attitude they portray is quite contrary to the actual ones who slog for that fifteen K a month living in a Metro. See one instance, a slight provocation from a caller leads to an agent jumping on to his Ma..Behan is the least you can expect for the actual ones in this profession..
The call center appears more like a club, where a bunch of employees fool around and flirt, play jokes or talk so casually that it is hard to believe if it is a work place. The sombre, sober reasonable approach of book is replaced with stupid, loud, over the top humor killing all the seriousness about the essential issues that story addresses. The smart witty Characteristic English one liners are replaced by crass filmy dialogs showing there is lot lost in translation. Production values are shoddy. It is perhaps first time that I can't see any breakthrough in the work of ace cinematographer Sanjay F. Gupta. There are item numbers that hamper the pace and still the music is not great. The brisk and lively pace that one finds in the book is replaced with a sluggish one. The book has a sort of socialist-Marxist point of view, which speak against the increasing materialism and capitalism propagated by rich, western world. Expecting the same in a Hindi film is a bit too much to ask for as at this point we can say that book is the writer's medium and film, the director's. Yes, coming to final point, finger for spoiling the show can be pointed at sloppy direction (Director Atul Agnihotri). The sensibility and maturity to handle the subject is simply missing. A lot more careful and sensitive approach was expected.
All in all the film just does not live up to the expectations of an average reader who has munched the book.
There are though few things that worked in film adaptation. Firstly, choosing an interesting subject as film premise since here the plot itself has enough Masala that could give any Bollywood potboiler a run for its money. Collaborating with Chetan Bhagat on screenplay helped in covering all the key contents of the novel. Plus it insures a novelty in story telling. Also the basic plot and premise is not tampered with and is kept intact with an exception of including Salman Khan-Katrina Kaif's unnecessary characters instead of original ones, who are out of place but then being "Sutradhaars" they can't really hamper the narrative. Even the book has an over the top Climax when mammoth problems are resolved in a quick fix way making the boy-next-door central characters emerging as super-heroes. This film does not give you a glimpse of working in call center industry even the book also doesn't but book provides necessary backdrop as it was written with some homework. That homework is not done before filming.
Therefore, the positive things end here. Rest that follows is completely bizarre. It is quite inevitable not to compare the film with the book. Accepted that it is not an easy task to bring the mental state of characters of a novel so vividly described in novel to be brought out by sheer performances with limited spoken words. Firstly, the casting is gone wrong. Either Actors are not briefed properly or simply they did not get it but apart from two performances- Sharman Joshi (Good) and Gul Panag (Average) others just shuffle between high pitch drama to stupid humor with the drop of a hat. They look like they emerge straight from a street Play, including supporting cast of a Boss, a technical supervisor, heroine's mother etc-ranging from funny to caricatures to simply buffoons. The type of houses the agents live in or the type of attitude they portray is quite contrary to the actual ones who slog for that fifteen K a month living in a Metro. See one instance, a slight provocation from a caller leads to an agent jumping on to his Ma..Behan is the least you can expect for the actual ones in this profession..
The call center appears more like a club, where a bunch of employees fool around and flirt, play jokes or talk so casually that it is hard to believe if it is a work place. The sombre, sober reasonable approach of book is replaced with stupid, loud, over the top humor killing all the seriousness about the essential issues that story addresses. The smart witty Characteristic English one liners are replaced by crass filmy dialogs showing there is lot lost in translation. Production values are shoddy. It is perhaps first time that I can't see any breakthrough in the work of ace cinematographer Sanjay F. Gupta. There are item numbers that hamper the pace and still the music is not great. The brisk and lively pace that one finds in the book is replaced with a sluggish one. The book has a sort of socialist-Marxist point of view, which speak against the increasing materialism and capitalism propagated by rich, western world. Expecting the same in a Hindi film is a bit too much to ask for as at this point we can say that book is the writer's medium and film, the director's. Yes, coming to final point, finger for spoiling the show can be pointed at sloppy direction (Director Atul Agnihotri). The sensibility and maturity to handle the subject is simply missing. A lot more careful and sensitive approach was expected.
All in all the film just does not live up to the expectations of an average reader who has munched the book.