The disappointment that is MNIK

 I went to A LOT of trouble to go see My Name is Khan. Trying to plan the day, the showtime, the transport, while dealing with the worst academic week I've had since the beginning of University (1 final, 2 midterms, 1 seminar, 1 lab, 2 assignments). Come Friday the 12th, I was running on about an hour of sleep the night before with people to pick up and a long drive to the theatre to look forward to. Since the regular theatre that plays movies in this city decided to be a douche and not play this movie, I had to drive a half hour to get to the crappy theatre. Except it ended up taking about an hour to get there because there had been an accident and there was lots of traffic. So we got to the theatre about ten minutes late. Some stupid, effing girl working at the theatre told us the shows for the rest of the night had been sold out. So we decided to buy tickets to any movie and sneak into ours. Except the theatre guy watched us like a hawk. We wasted a half hour in another theatre waiting for him to leave. He finally did, we finally went in and lo and behold, the theatre was half empty! Stupid idiot of a girl!

Anyways, we missed the first 45 minutes (probably less) but it wasn't a total loss, the story was just beginning. I doubt we missed much. Up until intermission, the movie was pretty decent. I was looking forward to what would happen after. And then the movie began again and OMG! What a crappy movie! We pretty much laughed through most of the 2nd half. First, there was about a million desi, muslim characters that none of us could keep straight. We couldn't figure out if the shopkeeper was the same as the guy in the mosque and if he had anything to do with that other guy. It was so confusing. Then just the whole story is so ridiculous. K-Jo tried to deal with every issue surrounding muslims post-9/11....it was like a buffet of issues. But there were no clear solutions to any of the problems...no ways on how to move on from any of this...basically, he just re-enacted the problems. I don't want to reveal too much but let's just suffice it to say that the main storyline, the main tragedy, is almost overlooked, the whole story becomes about this ridiculous quest for "redemption" which in no way would help the real tragedy.

For those who've seen it, I do want to say one thing. Is Wilhemina a black hole? How come everyone can go there but no one can leave? Just one of the more ridiculous things shown in the movie.

Shahrukh cannot play a character the same way Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump) or Dustin Hoffman (Rainman) did. SRK is charming, he's meant for the love story roles. He's not THAT good an actor. Aamir would probably do a better job or maybe someone new, who the audience had no pre-conceived notions about. Although, I don't even get why they had to show SRK as a challenged individual. It didn't really add too much to the story.

Karan Johar should stick to rom-coms. That's what he's good at. I miss the days of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kal Ho Na Ho. He's not meant for this serious stuff.

Personally, in this whole post-9/11 genre that Bollywood has recently created, my favorite movie is New York. It was more realistic. It presented a solution. It basically said, let's move on. Let's co-exist.

MNIK presented no real solutions. It basically said, let's go meet a real-ugly version of Obama and tell him we're not terrorists...because obviously, that will solve all the problems of this post-9/11 world.

I didn't completely hate the movie. I did enjoy a couple of scenes. The Sonya Jehan (btw, she's so pretty) part I liked. I also liked SRK's little speech at the mosque. The portrayal of muslims was ok...I wasn't overly impressed with it. In some way, I felt that K-Jo was trying to say that mentally normal muslims won't be able to make a difference or are somehow stuck in the past. That was part of the reason I didn't see how SRK's character's disability had any bearings on the story, it might have been better without it.

Anyways, all in all, I didn't have high expectations from Srk's acting and he barely exceeded those expectations but I was hoping Karan Johar had something new and insightful to say, but sadly, he didn't. He just re-enacted all the stories we have all heard post-9/11. I just don't see the point of doing that this late in the game. It's been over 8 years. We should be looking for solutions to this hate, rather than re-stating it. (I'm not even aware that it exists too much anymore, although, I do live in Canada so, luckily, not exposed to it as much) If the movie had stuck with one track, the racial profiling and dealt with how to tackle that issue, I'd have walked out much happier and satisfied. But it just ended up being a khichri of everything. And although, I'm a fan of khichri, I'm definitely not a fan of this khichri.