12/17/2001 » Film

I thought ‘Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham’ was average. Entertaining but not in the must-see three of the year. Nowhere near ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai,’ ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge,’ ‘Dil Chahta Hai,’ or even ‘Mohabbatein,’ which was uneven but pretty good in retrospect, as long as you get rid of Kim Sharma.

Everything felt contrived to me, everything felt commercially calculated instead of in service of the story, and ironically you fail commercially that way. Let’s hit the Muslim demographic here. Let’s hit the Brit audience there. Kajol acting like a silly little girl seemed really forced to me, her personality is stormier and more mature, the rebel suits her more. The whitey jokes, playing broadly to the Brit audience for laughs. The jingoism, just like ‘Gadar.’ The cheesy Hrithik character (muscle shirts and leather pants at school?)

It felt like an Indian ‘ID4.’ It had all the flaws of a sequel with none of the redeeming qualities of already having set up characters we love. The same actors in the same roles. Here are Hrithik and Kareena doing Yaadein again. Here are Amitabh and Shah Rukh doing Mohabbatein again. Here’s Shah Rukh striding across and putting a tikka on his engaged in that classic desi shotgun wedding scene, the one done better by Aamir Khan and Raveena using a burning chair. Here’s that actress doing the domineering Sikhni. I kept hearing ‘on cue, run and sob wildly’ in my head. Tamils are doing the best human stories in India today, you must see ‘Kandukondain Kandukondain’ with Aish.

Where it breaks new ground is in product placement and double entendres. The big fat Compaq label on the laptop. Amitabh being forced to say, ‘Does he have that gift yet? The, what do you call it, an iPaq?’ A new low. And double entendres, the hand through the Chudiyaan in stages, ‘Ab chubta hai?’ It was an incredibly graphic deflowering reference, cool on ‘South Park,’ but in a family film? Rani Mukherjee with a big fat mike in front of her lips, yuck. And a persistent homoeroticism, Shah Rukh saying ‘lovely boys? But I don’t like lovely boys,’ in pink suits and see-through teal mesh shirts, and all the male hugging.

It had the usual Bollywood unreality, Raichand lives in a Tudor castle in the middle of India? Mughal, sure, but Tudor? The music video version of a posh Indian family, helicopters and appearances on CNN. The dissed girlfriend, Rani, maturely melting away without a fight? The Punjabi mom letting her son go without raising holy hell? Indian patriarch begging for forgiveness from his kids, sobbing like a broken man? Never happens. Kajol was Muslim but shows up with a mangal sutra, what happened in between? Hrithik’s parents speak Hindi with a Punjabi accent, what’s that all about?

As a friend told me Friday night, too much gham and not enough khushi, it wasn’t uplifting. The happy-ending Pooja-Rohan wedding was in the credits, for God’s sake. The long, drawn-out reconciliation at the end was a film enema: long, painful and full of warm water and tears. It was four hours including intermission—what, they decided to use all their footage?

What I liked about it: some laugh-out-loud moments, mainly provided by Kajol, a howl whether in Chandni Chowk or Hampstead. The posh Brit accent, ‘milk and cookies,’ beautiful. Lots of little in-jokes: the little kid from KKHH showed up, the HAHK lines and music, the line from ‘Kaun Banga Crorepati.’ A mature treatment of sexuality: Rani Mukherjee leaned down and looked stunning, a backless blouse and those little strappy things on the skirt, very hip. Kajol and Shah Rukh in Egypt, sizzling, wow. Amitabh flirting with the backup dancers in full view of his wife. Kareena doing her best Cameron Diaz / Charlie’s Angels impression with her butt wiggling. Her hilarious character, straight outta ‘Grease.’

And the crowd experience. The uncles urging everybody to stand when the national anthem came on, and half the audience getting up. The parking lot of the entire shopping center full of desi cars, Supriyas and Rahuls parading across the personalized license plates on the Toyota minivans. The signs that said ‘6:00 show sold out. 6:30 show sold out. 7:00 show sold out,’ and so on, all the way up until midnight (I had to wait an hour and a half). The packed theater applauding when the bitchy Union City girls finally gave up the seats they stole from others. The samosas in the lobby. The entire freeway taken over by cars with families fleeing Fremont at 4am. Naz is an eight-screen Indian cinema here, the only big one in the area, and this kind of movie is their bread and butter. And the nearest thing to a Brit Asian experience around here.

Overall it lacked the clean lines of a real script, a human story, something designed mainly as a good story. This was designed as a sequel to KKHH, HAHK, DDLJ and Yaadein, and as a collection of marketing hooks, and it showed. This film pioneered biz model mainly, the ‘Making of K3G’ project, the sale of foreign rights, the wholesale adoption of a Hollywood biz model for a Bollywood film, and that’s what it’ll be remembered for.