Quite liked Karan Johar's Kabhi Alvidha Naa Kehna although you do have to “suspend disbelief” and all that. But for all my crummy taste I can see how the movie could have been better and what would have gotten the empty parking lot in the first week just that little bit fuller.
You probably know the story and have watched the movie by now, but in case you haven't, in KANK a soccer hero with a quivering mouth, Dev Saran (King Khan) is married to a fashionista, Rhea Saran (Preity Zinta) but bumps into family friend Maya (Rani Mukerji) on her wedding day where instead of being the life and soul of her wedding party she's sulking out in the backyard and gets anal about a wrapper he was about to litter the grass with. It doesn't take Dev long to figure something's up with Maya and a little probing yields that she's not exactly head-over-heels-in-romantic-love with Rishi Talwar (Abhishek Bachchan) who's a childhood friend she's about to marry. Here's the first weak link. Why, why, why would anybody not be in love with Abhishek Bachchan who's funny, a party animal, sensitive, caring, plans events and becomes the centre stage of them and dances pretty darn well? We will never know.
Dev and Maya part ways (in true Hindi film style they turn back to look at each other every few steps but each time one looks, the other has just turned away and the audience collective thinks, “hmmm.. what's up with that?”) and Dev promptly gets hit by a big, black car. He should've been looking out for things that really count - like big, black cars, but clearly he was too busy falling in love.
The car-knock screws up Dev's personality though. He can't play soccer anymore so he turns coach and his professional life takes a backseat causing a fair amount of bitterness. But his wife, Rhea Saran, is on a roll. And why wouldn't she be. Karan Johar, clearly inspired by her (they share the same name, live in NYC and are into fashion), gives Rhea a job in a fashion magazine where she soon becomes the “diva of Diva”. Here, in this straight from Devil Wears Prada setting we might have seen a subplot with some cattiness, some back biting, but instead the all-female staff of Diva are reduced to a hurrah-club for Rhea (they're always clapping about something or other that has to do with her) while we are whizzed straight to the real action which is apparently Rhea's boss Jai being attracted to her. Except this isn't really action, because Arjun Rampal who plays Jai can't really act so his supposedly-suave character is actually this slightly-sleepy looking sub character you don't really blame Preity for blowing off.
Meanwhile Maya (Rani Mukerji) despite being adored by her seriously hot husband falls, inexplicably, madly in love with Shah Rukh Khan. I'd be a little wary of someone who terrorises his little I've-seen-you-somewhere-before son (yeah, little Arjun is modelled straight after the precocious kid with the big glasses in Jerry Maguire) as much as Dev does his son, but Rani clearly has bad taste. Not just by preferring an intense, grouchy, sour soccer coach to her own charming and effusive husband, but also by saying things like, “I like blue” when we all know earth tones are the colours this season. Sigh.
While they romance in scenic city locales, their own marriages gradually crumble, Shah Rukh's mom (Kirron Kher) befriends Rani's father-in-law Sam(Amitabh Bachchan) and Rishi (Abhishek) and Rhea (Preity) meet off and on. Weak link two is that this is where the action should really have shifted. A romance between Rishi and Rhea would've been perfect! They are fun, happy, party people in love with their spouses and with the world, they dance well, dress pretty and would have spread love and good cheer through the film. Instead we are treated to a love affair between morose, son-abusing Khan who and an ice-maiden who harbours some deep-seated psychological trauma toward parties and slightly loud merry-making in general and who seems to have married out of some perverse sense of duty to the son of the man who brought her up (Amitabh Bachchan, Sam, brought her up since she was an orphan).
Anyway, the twosome finally confess to their partners and sadly leave their respective houses but, being complex, riddled-with-contradictions people, don't tell each other they've been removed from home and hearth so they live unhappily alone for three years till Rishi (Abhishek) finally sees good sense and gets married to Catherine (Saira Mohan), presumably more willing to dance at parties than Rani was. Rhea shows up at the wedding with Jai (she has sunk to even lower depths than her marriage with Shah Rukh it seems, but atleast she has seen reason in the eleventh hour for she informs Maya that being married to Dev was a punishment) – and Maya realises Dev is alone and soon departing for Canada. Any right thinking girl would have heaved a sigh of relief that Son Abuser Angry With Life person was moving away but misdirected Maya races to the historic Penn Station where she reunites with Dev.
Presumably they live happily ever after.
Weakest link number three is that Jai (Rampal) wasn't shovelled onto Catherine and Preity left for Abhishek but all's well that ends well. The film tells us repeatedly that similar situations bring people together in binding friendships and has some great songs including one where John Abraham plays DJ. (What's with one of his eyes by the way, or is it just me? As also, come to think of it, one of Bipasha's eyes? Maybe that's what brought them together in a binding friendship).
The NYT might argue that the film fails because Rani's too-heavy eye shadow clouds her vision and has her fall for Dev, but I'd argue that Karan Johar (who makes a fleeting appearance a la Hitchcock in one scene) just picked the wrong love affair to back.
