Why are you a "Family" ?

On a fateful Wednesday , I let my feet venture into the city's newly built multiplex to catch up with Mr Karan Johar through his star studded movie- “We are Family”.

I am not a huge fan of Karan Johar but have always expected his movies to tickle a funny bone here and there and entertain me with catchy music if not a tight screenplay.

However , this one movie has made me doubt Karan Johar's taste for cinema for life.

“We are Family”is apparently a shot by shot remake of a hollywood flick “Step Mom”. The cast of the original movie is sure to suffer a massive stroke if subjected to the trauma of watching the Hindi Version.

As it is with other Kjo's movies , this story also takes you to America/London (I don't recollect now). We have a bunch of wannabe american-desis and their only connect with India is the fact that they speak in Hindi.


Kajol plays the role of a divorced wife who is content and happy with her 3 children until cervical cancer knocks the door and saps the life out of her. Kareena Kapoor is a career woman as she repeatedly tells the audience lest they get confused as she seems to stay home or appear jobless most of the time.

Arjun Ramgopal is either into the advertising industry or has a Kodak showroom in America. His occupation is not very clear but since he is spotted with a camera in most of the scenes , he must be into one of these professions.

Arjun and Kajol have 3 mentally deranged kids , though the writer would like you to believe otherwise. Their eldest daughter Alaya is supposedly 13. Alaya manages to exhibit the intelligence of a 4 year old while disturbingly look at least 25. The youngest daughter Anjali is probably 5 years old. The only training in acting that she has is to either smile aimlessly or cry to no avail. The second son is not important to the story.In fact a lot of screen space and time could have been saved if the makers of the cinema had realised that the kid had no acting talent in him and would have been better off attending school instead.

Arjun and Kajol are a happily divorced couple until Arjun brings his love interest Kareena to meet his family.As it is with 99 out of 100 movies , the kids hate Kareena in the beggining and then start liking her. In the meantime Kajol discovers that she has been let down by her body and that her days are numbered. She decides to train "Kareena the career woman" into "Kareena the Mom". The story revolves around this training , random incidents and such other useless arguments ensconced by needless crying ,mindless happy moments and bizzare outcomes.( It is difficut to write the synopsis of a story-less- story).


There must have been a story in the beginning .Otherwise it is difficult for the film to survive given the wrong cues ,reactions and dialogues the cast continues to subject each other to.
For example , Kajol with great discomfort , announces to her children that she is suffering from cervical cancer and that her days are numbered.
While the audience prepares itself to watch an emotionally heart wrenching spectacle , The eldest daughter Alya challenges the audiences intelligence by calling her mother a LIAR. At this point one's basic beliefs about humanity are shaken from the root. If this were not enough , this cretin explains the basis of her allegation. She reminds her mother that just a few scenes back her mother had promised that she would never leave her and now she had the audacity to announce that she had cancer and that she was dying,

The creative hand behind this dialouge is requested to refrain from writing anything after this for the rest of his/her/its life .

A scene or two after this , one finds Alaya dancing at a pub. When caught by her mother for this offence , she manages to justify her stand by saying that her mother shouldnt bother as she was leaving them anyway.

At this point one wonders as to what Karan Johar was thinking when he let this film hit the screens.


.
Arjun,Kajol and Kareena come across as sincere actors who have been betrayed by miserable direction and imbecile dialogues.Kajol deserves an award for crying evry now and then and reacting to her reaction less children .Arjun Ramgopal deserves a standing ovation for looking clueless throughout the movie and finally Karan Johar requires medical help before he invests in his next movie.

We are family – Stupidity Redefined.