Kyon Ki...

Director: Priyadarshan

Cast: Salman Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Rimii, Om Puri

4.5/10

Q for Kyon Ki... and Garam Masala director Priyadarshan: Kyon? Why make a mixed-up masala movie where hero ends up zero in an ending that’s a total loser? Aisa kyon kiya?

Cue for answer: Kyon Ki?in perfectly ordered mental asylum, chaotic hodgepodge-genre film cannot decide whether it’s black comedy (insane inmates break rules and break-dance) or bleak tragedy (the ending).

Interjected with booster doses of ballistic psychedelic music-video images imagined by medicated patients (prescription drug-induced hallucination?). Salman is nutcase ‘Number 36’ tucked away in fancy-shancy loony-bin in the hills.

Doc Kareena, determined to cure his mental illness (or amnesia?) psyches him into recalling the past, and forgetting past relationship (Rimii). Treatment, of course, is standard love and fresh air song--dance therapy. And, yes, they fall madly in love and, no, father Om isn’t too crazy about daughter’s pyaar mein diwana pagalkhaana warder (has Kareena lost her mind?). So he cruelly renders Salman brain-dead with electric shock. But compassionate Jackie asphyxiates him with pillow and ‘puts him out of misery’. And we’re left gasping, in heart-sinking dark-defeatist anti-climax.

Why were we made to go through the guy’s dramatic traumatic struggle, if he doesn’t even make it? Odd screenplay. We don’t want to see our favourite filmy hero as helpless victim. He should be fearless and flamboyant quick and Quixotic, as usual fighting and winning our battles for us. Not a vegetable at the mercy of mercy death.

So Salman, kasam Tere Naam ki, please don’t do such depressing roles. And any pretensions by the director of taking-off on Milos Forman’s mindblowing allegorical film, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, can just fly out the window. Kyon Ki? by killing our hero, Priyadarshan commits sacrilege in basic Bollywood storytelling. That is, letting bad (villain) triumph over good (hero). We’d prefer ridiculous to realistic anyday and would rather have Salman jump up and exclaim, Mumbai-tapori style, ”Abe, main zinda hoon. Kyon Ki?film ka hero main hoon.”

Mandira Mitra