Director Shree Narayan Singh seems to have a thing for high volumes. Taking into account Toilet – Ek Prem Katha and Batti Gul Meter Chalu, Singh is easily among the rare few who wouldn’t mind blaring noise during festive occasions or at the wee hours of the night. The decibel level in everything associated with his cinema is so high that the characters sound as if they have microphones planted in their larynxes. To make matters more distressing, Batti Gul Meter Chalu speaks a version of the Kumaoni dialect that, according to the film, is apparently as simple as tacking ‘thehera’ and ‘bal’ onto the end of every sentence.
With Batti Gul Meter Chalu, Singh targets another social issue: the alleged exploitation of consumers by private electricity suppliers. One cannot help noticing how the film focuses exclusively on the private sector, with barely a mention of its government counterparts. Before reaching its central conflict, we meet its cheekily named protagonists: Sundar Tripathi (Divyendu Sharma), Susheel “SK” Kumar (Shahid Kapoor), and Lakshmi “Nauti” Nautiyal (Shraddha Kapoor). Equally smitten by Nauti, SK and Tripathi devise a swayamvar-like arrangement in which she gets to choose her partner. Extremely silly but wholeheartedly commercial, this stretch is easily the most endearing part of the film. There is an adorable song while the two men woo her in their own, markedly different ways, before her decision inevitably dents their friendship.
Running parallel is Tripathi’s struggle with a newly established factory, where a dispute with his electricity provider threatens his livelihood. This leads to the interval point, which, to its credit, genuinely jolts us into paying attention.
It is in the second half that Batti Gul Meter Chalu loses whatever grip it had. The film devolves into a bizarre courtroom drama, and the volume rises without any corresponding increase in dramatic urgency. Defence lawyer Gulnar (Yami Gautam), possibly one of the least prepared lawyers to step into a Hindi courtroom, is subjected to relentless verbal harassment, serving a screenplay that treats humiliation as a punchline. Meanwhile, a female judge (Sushmita Mukherjee) feels less like an organic character and more like a borrowed gimmick from the Jolly LLB franchise.
Worse, the film repeatedly shifts emotional registers without earning them. One moment SK is cracking jokes; the next he is weeping for the cause. The courtroom audience follows suit, laughing one second and sobbing the next, as if changing the actors’ expressions were a substitute for emotional movement. The absence of a convincing legal rhythm becomes glaring: the affluent accused remain strangely passive, SK faces no meaningful opposition, and there is no sustained battle of wits. The film simply raises its voice in place of raising the stakes.
Singh, credited as both director and editor, does himself few favours in the cutting room. Siddharth-Garima’s script takes far too long to establish its premise, piling on unnecessary exposition and using two monochrome narrators for an odd humour track that is neither funny nor useful. Flashbacks, repeated shots and endless establishing frames inflate the running time to nearly three hours.
His staging is similarly clumsy. In close-ups, characters stand so uncomfortably close that ordinary professional interactions feel physically awkward. Transitions are equally jarring: in one scene, a brooding Shahid Kapoor sits silently during a court recess; in the next, he is suddenly trumpeting slogans with zero dramatic preparation. The issue isn’t just that the scenes are loud; they feel entirely disconnected.
It doesn’t help that Batti Gul Meter Chalu gets so little from its leading man. Shahid Kapoor appears to be constantly pushing for an emotional intensity that the material has not earned, resulting in a performance that feels strained rather than spontaneous. Shraddha Kapoor, looking radiant, handles the local dialect with far more ease than her co-star. Divyendu Sharma, meanwhile, is a genuine scene-stealer. Playing the quintessential good boy with charm and natural rhythm, his performance makes us wonder why an actor of his ability gets so few opportunities with roles of real substance.
Singh’s approach here mirrors Toilet – Ek Prem Katha: place an ordinary man against a massive system, surround him with citizens who instantly rally behind newspaper headlines, and mistake volume for impact. There is a relevant social message buried underneath the noise, but the screenplay keeps interrupting its best elements with jokes, melodrama and courtroom theatrics.
After nearly three hours, Batti Gul Meter Chalu buries its central argument under the very excess its director cannot resist. The charm of its opening romance offers a brief respite, but everything else is just empty noise, leaving us stranded completely in the dark.
Rating: ★★
Batti Gul Meter Chalu is now streaming on Zee5.
