SRK aka king Khan, Karan Johr, Kajol in second innings, I was bit sceptical, as from my own experiences I’ve seen that lots of hype is not a necessarily a healthy thing. But the K-team (Khan, Kajol, and Karan) has lived up to the expectations, (at least of the masses)
My name is Khan is a smart script, it’s blend of Hollywood three-act structure with typical Indian love story minus Karava-choth, and wedding songs. Karan is matured in terms of screen play/ script writing. He successfully awakens the emotions of common people. I bet lots of wet handkerchiefs in Indian theatres!
There were few post 9/11 films came and gone, but what different in MNK is, the post 9/11 atrocities stays in background without getting loud and making film boring. Lover boy SRK travels back and forth between real world and surreal world.
Here are the highlights of the script.
• Journey of protagonist to achieve his goal. (Straight from Hollywood’s formula)
• Make protagonist miserable (Asperger’s syndrome) to gain sympathy from the audience (Thankfully those extended dance sequences are out of equation)
• Concept of Hero: where a Hero helps to save the world, lives and comes out as winner in the end. (Hurricane in Georgia)
• It’s all about SRK: This script is specifically written keeping SRK in mind, and nothing wrong in it, but I do believe that good scripts are characters based and not actor based. An actor should be able to slip in to the character not the other way round.
• Influence of western cinema is flashing/flagging in this script, starting from three act formula structure to the story idea, cinematography, back ground score and so on. I hope this does not a step forward to loosing originality of art of story telling the Indian way!
SRK is brilliant as Mr Khan, Kajol welcome back, still I’m not big fan of your voice culture, but it does not matter. Jimmy is OK, so are the others. Many Hollywood actors got important roles - a new beginning in terms of collaboration between two giants of cinema.
Direction I’m sorry but too predictable, Karan tried hard and he is successful to some extent in awakening feelings in the audience’s minds, but nothing outstanding. A typical Bollywood job if I must say. Sometimes I wonder why they don’t dare to be different, do you have to have dialogues for everything, can’t you few emotions without saying? Do you have to have a fat lady in your film as good omen ( and for that matter few other irrelevant characters such as Dr. Rahman just to prove a point)? Do you really have to stab protagonist and then show him in and out of death? Do you have to take inspiration from Forrest Gump including mannerisms of Tom Hanks? I personally know this is very hard for a director not to indulge in to the stereotypes but at Karan Johr’s level, he can afford it I suppose.
Music good. Cinematography and VFX are cool. American landscape has been captured luxuriously. Editing could be tighter.
The film grabs and looses the viewer few times. At times melodramatic and loud at times really strong. In short it’s not gripping from beginning to the end. SRK carries film on his shoulder throughout and saves the day in the end.
My Rating: Three and Half/ Five.
