Khatta Meetha

<p>Sachin Tichkule is a struggling Maharashtrian contractor in the bylanes of , a small town in the , who dreams big but has no chance of his dreams coming true as he doesn’t have any money to bribe the bureaucracy. His family has lost faith in him, telling him to earn money through honest means. To make matters worse, the new Municipal Commissioner turns out to be his ex-girlfriend, Gehna Ganpule, who now hates him due to his wayward ways. When Sachin meets Gehna in her office, a flashback reveals that Sachin was an honest college student who was an ardent follower of Gandhian principles. His brothers-in-law Trigun Fatak, Suhas Vichare, and his elder brother Harish Tichkule were all responsible for a bridge collapse resulting in many fatalities and were helped by a politician named Sanjay Rana. After putting the blame of the mishap on their driver, Vishwas Rao, they killed him, fearing he would reveal the truth. Meanwhile, Sanjay’s lustful eyes fall on Sachin’s sister Anjali. Sachin warns him to keep away from Anjali and slaps him. Meanwhile, a journalist named Azad Bhagat wants justice as his family was killed in that accident. Anjali is betrothed to Sanjay, unbeknownst to Sachin. When he confronts his father Ramakant Tichkule as to how the marriage is finalized to an evil man without his knowledge, he reprimands Sachin, saying he has no right to say anything as he has no money to marry his sister off. After losing touch with her, Sachin learns that Anjali has been attempting to contact him, and when he goes to their house one night, he is informed by the guard that they have gone out. While returning from Sanjay’s house, he sees Azad sneaking out, but is left merely suspicious. Shortly after Sachin ends up complicating matters with Gehna when she tried to commit suicide upon being arrested for a fraudulent set-up on his part and is hospitalized, Sachin breaks the truth about his disillusionment with his past principles and reconciles with Gehna as well as her elder brother Madhav. A few days later, he learns that Anjali died in a gas explosion. While Ramakant is devastated, Sachin is suspicious and smells foul play in her death. He then meets Azad again at the municipal office in Gehna’s presence, where he initially assumes he is a thief but soon learns of Azad’s intentions from her about how he had acquired strong evidence that would help in putting the people involved in the bridge collapse behind bars from Sanjay’s house, for which he sneaked into their house that day. They both then agree to help each other to reveal the corruption behind the faulty construction of the bridge. Gehna and Azad file a case against the fraudsters. Sanjay learns of this and gets Gehna transferred to another city, later hiring masked robbers who kill Azad while he is on his way to court. Sachin takes the fatally injured Azad to the hospital for treatment. At the hospital, while Azad is dying in Sachin’s arms, he reveals that while he was stealing the evidence, he saw Anjali being raped by Sanjay’s friends, and it’s not clear whether she was murdered by her rapists while she escaped or she committed suicide. Vowing vengeance against Sanjay, Sachin decides to search for the documents at Azad’s house but finds them missing, prompting him to enlist the help of his sidekick Rangeela in a ploy to smoke them out. Attempting to make sure the evidence isn’t revealed, Sanjay decides to hide it elsewhere. Sachin follows Sanjay and spots him fleeing with the bag full of evidence, whence a fight ensues between Sanjay and Sachin. Sanjay is then killed after being run over by a truck, and Sachin successfully retrieves the evidence. Trigun, Harish, and Suhas are arrested, and the whole family, especially Sachin’s sisters-in-law, begins belittling him, claiming he was jealous of them, blaming him for tarnishing the family name. Sachin then argues back that his brothers decided to silence the journalists and the general public who’d bring out the truth by bribing and threatening them. He further argues that while their husbands are still alive behind bars where the wives can see them, the people who died in the bridge collapse incident are gone forever, and nothing can be done to bring them back and he had to deal with the pain of losing Anjali the most, considering that his brothers-in-law had a hand in her death and were not reprimanded. Fully aware that others will strongly suspect that he did this to usurp the family mansion, Sachin decides to leave. Ramakant, realizing his honesty and trustworthiness, stops him and rekindles their relationship, saying that he is proud of him. As he gets out of the house, Sachin spots Gehna, who tells him that she remained a spinster waiting for him and confesses her love for Sachin, and they decide to marry. The film was shot in and , located in . The house where Akshay Kumar’s character and his family lived was filmed at a palace in Phaltan, which is the ancestral home of , the first wife of . Upon release, the film received mixed reviews from critics. of described it as a ” ” film. Sukanya Verma of gave it 2/5 saying, “The story with its baggage of generic turns and contrived twists manages to laugh the audience at many points but all seems too familiar in making its even-now significant point. In addition, it seems a tad too long at its three hours running time. Noyon Jyoti Parasara of AOL rated the film 1.5/5 and stated, “In no way does ‘Khatta Meetha’ look like a film made by a director who has made 80 films till date. Certainly not from a director who got a National Award barely a year back for ‘Kanchivaram’. This one is a rather amateur product which is best avoided.” Blessy Chettiar of DNA gave it a rating of 2/5 and said, “Khatta Meetha is a hotchpotch of too much drama and very little comedy”. of the gave it the highest rating of 3.5/5 saying, “Tune off a bit for the tedious middle and you could be in for some fun and frolic in Khatta Meetha”. The film’s soundtrack is composed by with lyrics penned by and Nitin Raikwar, with rapper U.R.L. performing the Marathi rap on “Nana Chi Taang”. The song “Sajde Kiye” is sung by and in the film version. The song “Aila Re Aila” was reused again 11 years later in the 2021 film albeit with a bit of remixing. Kumar too starred in that film. Since its release, Khatta Meetha has made a large impact on meme culture, particularly when relating to poor quality construction of roads nationwide. Khatta Meetha is also noted as a comic satire that targets inefficient bureaucracy and corruption.</p>