I don’t see why it had to be “Main aur Mrs. Khanna” and not just “Mrs. Khanna” :-)

There was a time not too long ago when Indian cinema often narrated the boy meets gal, they fall in love, face world-imposed trials and tribulations and finally unite with the words “THE END” adorning the screen. Since then, Indian cinema and its audience has matured enough to realize that marriage is not “THE END” but “THE BEGINNING”. That the months of running around together joyously are but a passing phase and the real troubles start when the couple are hit with the responsibilities of life together. Then came a series of movies like Saathiya, Metro, even Gangster which tracks the lives of married people – when other factors like careers, money, temptations, boredom, time and priorities play major roles in the narration.

Mr and Mrs Khanna is another one of this series which spent about 5 minutes on the (totally inane and unconvincing) falling in love and getting married part. (All of you who know me will know I am the dreamy, romantic, ‘not very practical in these matters’ types. If NISHA thought this part was lame, you can imagine how it must have been.)

Then come the guy’s career troubles. This paragraph is only for those of you who have not seen it. The hero decides to start over in Singapore after his career hits rock bottom in Australia. He also decides his wife should return to India while he is doing that without so much as consulting her or convincing her but merely springing it on her at the last minute. So after she finds out at the airport that she is not going with him to Singapore, she decides not to board the flight to India, seeks the help of friends, works in a shop and holds her own out till he returns successful. In the meantime another guy falls in love with her and there was really nothing more to guy 2 than that!

The protagonist Sameer, merely comes off as a closed-mouth, arrogant, jerk, who did not stir the slightest of sympathies in me. The heroine’s character was more someone the audience could empathize with. She stands by her husband while still being firm that HE did not have the right to make big decisions concerning her without consulting her.

It was bad enough that Sameer falls for her at first sight, but it was a little ridiculous how the other lead man, Akash also falls for this girl at first sight – love, lust whatever :-). Yes Kareena is hot – given!! But there are lots of hot girls in the world and even in this movie. Would it not have been better if Akash had just been the guy she approaches for a phone to make a call, who later became attracted to her strength of character and loyalty to her husband??

The part with the husband-wife separation was vague leaving how close they were at that time to the viewer’s imagination. Were they talking often? Did they know what was going on in each-other’s life? Or was it like he exited the picture completely and just appeared out of nowhere one fine day?

I believe movies do not necessarily have to have a point to them - they can just be movies. So I shall not ask what the point of this movie was anyway. But within the narration of the story, I fail to see what the significance of Akash’s love is. It seems to me like the movie could have well done without it. It still would have been about how a couple got married, had financial troubles, separated for a bit, but stayed loyal to each other and then united in the end. (I am not going to ask what would have happened if Sameer had remained unsuccessful. I understand that is beyond the scope of this movie :-))
But what was the point of having that whole “other guy” if they were not going to do one of the following:-
1) Bring in infidelity angle - have her have an affair with him and then have the couple deal with that later on
2) Bring confusion into the woman’s mind about what kind of love she wants from a man.
3) Make a revolutionary statement where the woman leaves her husband for the other guy
4) Have him hit on her incessantly trying to change her idea about the idealistic love she believes in.
5) Bring in the crazy suspicion angle on the husbands part and then effect a separation because of that.
Or ANY other reason that you guys can think of that escapes me. But as is - he could have just been one of the people she met who helped her. Why bring in the one-sided love angle at all??? Was it to justify the insinuation in the title? Or was it to bring in the comedy aspect towards the end of the movie with the two guys fighting for the gal? Or maybe they were just using his love to signify how un-swerving a Bharathiya Nari’s pati-vrathaness is - that it never once crosses her mind that guy 2 loves her when her husband sees it in two days?

To sum it up, the story was not too bad, the actual scenes not too good and not even that entertaining (totally senseless cinema can be good if it is that, after all entertainment is the point of ALL cinema). Both the male lead characters are not ones that the audience can sympathize or empathize with. Salman looks old. Kareena and Sohail were all right. The two male leads, or even the other male characters did not prove to be much eye-candy. The women in frame were the only ones worth looking at.

One word verdict – TIMEPASS
PS – I still don’t see why it had to be “Main aur Mrs. Khanna” and not just “Mrs. Khanna” :-)