We Are Family

The bane of “We Are Family”, surprisingly is the fact that it was probably not positioned or marketed to the right target audience. If there was a compelling effort made to get across the relevant middle class housewife in India, it would have managed to achieve much much much more success than it actually achieved @ the BO. But then KJo these days manages to make most of his monies from the US and UK markets. So much so that it would seem clearly that he has forgotten that there are a billion plus people in this country who would probably enjoy a movie like WAF.

Aman (Arjun Rampal) & Shreya (Kareena Kapoor) are a couple very much in love. Aman, however, has been married before to Maya (Kajol). Its been 3 years since their divorce but there are also 3 children in question – Aaliya (Aachal Munjal), Arjun (Nominath Ginsberg) and Anjali (Diya Sonecha). Aman wants Shreya to meet the kids and get to know them. And 3 years seems sufficient time for the kids to have gotten used to the concept of their father not being married to their biological mother anymore. With this in mind, he gets Shreya along with him to Anjali’s birthday party. But getting the kids to accept Shreya turns out to be a whole different ball game. Hell breaks loose in the first meeting when Shreya ruins the birthday cake and then Aaliya takes off in a few minutes when she sees Aman consoling Shreya. The kids call Shreya a witch for spoiling their party and Maya is not of much help either.

Shreya, swears never to get to know them. But as luck would have it, she has no other choice on a weekend where Aman doesn’t land up to pick up the kids because he misses his flight and Maya is not reachable. Shreya does her best to get on the right side of the kids but they continue to give her a really tough time. Shreya sweet talks here way with Anjali and Arjun but then Aaliya is your average 13 year old who continues to be a tough nut to crack. Nevertheless, Shreya keeps at it and takes the kids with her to work where Anjali saves the day. She takes the kids after that for ice-cream. And just as everything seems to be falling into place, Aaliya plays spoilsport. She tells Anjali that Shreya is trying to butter them because she wants to take their father away from them. Anjali runs away but is quickly found at the cop station with Maya. Aman also joins them. After a few heated words, Maya very clearly asks Shreya to stay away from the kids unless supervised by her.

WAF, as most of you would know by now, is a copy of “Step Mom”. But I am not sure if most of you know that it is a Columbia Tristar Release. Yes my dears, the influence of the west is slowly but surely creeping into the country. And therefore, you are seeing producers such as KJo being very candid in accepting that the movie is a copy. Does a lot for the goodwill in the export market eh? Better late than never I say.

And the era of the debutante director also continues in Bollywood. Siddharth Malhotra, I m sure would have liked a less soppy project to start with. But with him proudly proclaiming that KJo is his guru and that he will stay with KJo till he is kicked out, one does have doubts about his orientation. Nevertheless, he does a pretty decent job with WAF. He could not have influenced the story much. But he does his 2 bits by getting as much he can out of an otherwise quite uninspired star cast. Kajol is way off her best, Kareena better than average and Arjun Rampal pleasantly better than average. The kids do their best to get the cutey pie image to the fore. However, the make up department totally sucks. Kajol looks anything but suffering from a terminal disease. Kareena in the final scene doesn’t look a day older considering that it would have been at least 10 years after the scene before. Arjun Rampal’s beard in the final sequence is totally eew!!!! But then again, consistency is not what one would expect from a KJo movie.

As a movie I would give WAF 5 on 10. It’s a sad movie :’), A complete tear jerker. But it is definitely not a bad movie. It doesn’t do justice to Step Mom but then one cannot replace the performances of Susan Sarandon, Julia Roberts and Ed Harris. And Sid Malhotra can in no way be compared to Chris Columbus. Worth watching with the family.