Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna

The Yashraj family gather again for another lavish,big budget,glitzy flick filled with beautiful people who laugh, love, fight,sing, dance and last but not least cry copious amounts of tears as they wring emotion out of every dramatic scene and god knows there's plenty in an Indian movie. If that statement sounded like a rant against the genre, it isn't really. It's just that, for this viewer,personally, an excursion into Bollywood every now and then brings home the realisation that opulent song & dance extravaganzas like this is the cinematic equivalent of a bar of milk chocolate for me: to be indulged in every once in awhile as a guilty pleasure, but too much of it make my teeth hurt, my skin itch and my bowels to move. And at the end of it you know it probably wsn't good for you but...God Damn if it wasn't fun while you were indulging in it!

But I digress. Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna(KANK for short)( Never Say Goodbye) is the latest offering of Karan Johar, Bollywood's Box-Office Midas on the strength of 2 previous back-to-back blockbusters "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai"(KKHH for short) and "Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gam". Once again Karan casts his favourite hero(and Numero Uno Star) Shah Rukh Khan who once again acts opposite those 2 lovely and hot actresses,Priety Zinta and Rani Mukherji. And once again,Amitabh Bachan is back as Rani's father-in-law. This gang never play far from each other. After all, Shah Rukh was paired with Preity in her debut Dil Se, she was his heroine in that epic romance "Veer Zaara", where Rani had a supporting role as a lawyer. Preity was also his heroine in "Kal Ho Naa Ho", where Rani had a cameo in a song scene. Rani also cameoed in "Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gaam" (K3G) and was one of RK's heroines in "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai" the other being Kajol who re-paired with the King Khan in K3G and then proceeded to cameo in song scenes in both "Kal Ho Naa Ho" and also KANK. Amitabh was SRK's uncle in "Veer Zaara" and his dad in K3G and he's Rani's father-in-law in KANK where he was her teacher in "Black". Whew! No 6 degrees of separation for the Yash Raj gang more like Zero degrees of togetherness.

So what do they all do here? Let's see, SRK is married to Preety and Rani's about to be married to Abishek Bachan when the movie starts. SRK, a soccer player on a winning streak and about to sign a multi-million dollar contract meets Rani on a park bench outside the mansion(No one lives in modest dwellings in a Karan Johar film) where she's about to get married. You see, she's marrying a childhood friend and is unsure if she feels any love for him.SRK and her talk, he urges her to go through with the wedding ,they get up, walk away and then, in slow motion, pause, turn and look at each other only about 27 times before SRK makes it to the gates outside and is promptly knocked flat on his back by a Merc.

Cut to a few years later,and the Khan is a moody, morose grouch with a limp, his career as the Indian Beckham gone up in smoke. He spends his time taking out his anger at his Uber-successful fashion designer wife and cute son. So, an overall ass-hole, in other words.

Rani is married to Abishek, who's a bit of a man-child still into parties and rock and roll while she STILL feels little passion for him. Via a stupid contrivance, Rani and the Khan meet......

Since the starting scene depicting their meeting has all the subtlety of a pail of ice cold water thrown at you while sleeping in the middle of winter in Siberia, you know without a shadow of a doubt that Rani and the Khan are gonna Get It On, finding friendship,kinship and passion, all the things missing from their respective marriages. The rest of this Looooooong movie(clocking in at an endurance testing 3 and a quarter hours) details the impact of this affair on their spouses and their lives.

The extra-marital affair is a tricky thing to do in movies: the cheating party need to be sufficiently sympathetic to earn audience empathy for what is in essence a very selfish act. And Karan Johar stumbles here: SRK's character is thoroughly unlikable, the typical chauvinist who can't bear his wife's success and Rani's character fares little better, an ice queen who cannot muster an iota of affection for a husband who, childishness aside, truly adores her.But lucky for him, the mega-wattage stars manage to pull it off, SRK on sheer charisma and Rani.....God Bless Her..proves once again that she's truly one of the most talented actresses in Hindi Cinema working today, her eyes effectively conveying her anguish as she tries to stay in a marriage she's drifting further and further away from.

Preity's role isn't as meaty but she does well with the few scraps of dramatic scenes thrown at her.

Abishek turns out to be the most likeable of the lot, his character the most sympathetic and in the tense marital face-offs with Rani, hits the ball out of the park. And his scenes with real life Pa, the Big B is sheer magic as only a real life father-Son duplicating their roles on screen can be.

The Big B has essayed many roles in his long and illustrious career, but the one thing the former Angry Young Man of Hindi cinema has never played is the Dirty Old Man.Well, with KANK he can effectively cross that out of his list as well, as Karan J has him cavorting with nubile Blonde babes a la Hugh Hefner. But his later serious scenes and his growing friendship with SRK's mother show why he's truly one of Hindi Cinema's true Titans. The Big B rocks in all his scenes!

Speaking of rocking, that's exactly what the superb soundtrack by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy does! Foot-stomping chartbusters mingle easily with melancholy ballads, yes there are shades of their earlier soundtrack of KHNH, but it's still a solid effort.

Music and stars aside, what finally redeems KANK is the gutsy (by Indian movie standards) ending that eschews "traditional" solutions to marital problems. Kudos to Karan J for this.

All in all, an entertaining diversion for a lazy weekend.