Co produced by Kriti Sanon and Kanika Dhillon the film suffers from lack of consistency possibly from the writing stage. The film aims to spread awareness about women and domestic abuse, it attempts to express the turmoils of abuse trauma, its generational history but fails to do it through out the run time. The film tries hard to be It Suspect X (Jaane Jaan), It Ends With Us, Gone Girl and The Girl In The Train all at once with a crime thriller genre — it ends up being none of them.
It begins with VJ, a cop is unable to find a case to keep and give justice to. When a call is made about domestic violence and the wife refuses to file a complaint, she gets obsessed with the family. After following them for a while, VJ finds out Saumya has a twin sister and a nani who over the years has turned into her mother. Amma reveals the call was made by her and she goes on to reveal why Saumya would refuse to file for a complaint. As the trailer revealed, the twin sisters don’t have the best relationship. They don’t just hate each other, but they compete with each other even for the love of Dhruv, husband to Saumya and ex-boyfriend to Shailee.
As VJ finds out more about Saumya’s condition the more she is convinced she needs to get her away from Dhruv, in hopes of finding some evidence she continues to follow them, ask questions and more. However, she ends up finding Shailee and Dhruv flirting with each other while the abuse increases. Amma tried to gather evidence of the abuse but instead, an incident takes place and Saumya finally files a murder attempt case against her husband.
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The crime thriller relies heavily on narration in the first half but the second half turns into a court drama. The cop takes the case personally trying to break it down, the twins have a great deal of hatred between them making both of them unreliable, and Dhruv claiming to be innocent is presented as a brat coming from money. The film does little to develop the characters and the screenplay gives the audience no reason to sympathise with any of them.
Kriti Sanon does her best to justify the two characters bu the film proves that the dynamic was necessary for the plot or its message. Kanika Dhillon’s story paints a bad picture of all three characters and proceeds to claim they all could be good. The crux of the story is that domestic abuse victims need love and support, but the film does everything to undermine the abuse and trauma of the character. Do Patti doesn’t take itself seriously at all despite the lack of humour.
On the other hand, Kajol’s VJ though an interesting character with good performance, she turns out to be the least likeable. The unnecessary punchy dialogues, inconsistency in the accent and one-dimensional behaviour bring it all down. The film does not have much to offer for a concept that should be taken seriously. The run time feels long, with one too many forgettable songs and a wafer-thin plot. Despite A-listers in the lead, Do Patti does not match up to its expectations.
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Overall, the film does not offer much to look forward to and leaves you with little at the end.
Cover artwork by Patrick Gawande/Mashable India
