Main Aur Mrs. Khanna Go To Sleep

Prem Soni’s directorial debut, Main Aur Mrs. Khanna is simply astounding.

Astoundingly boring, that is.

Meet Samir Khanna (Salman Khan, botoxed within an inch of his life and channeling Mephistopheles’ younger brother), a nearly comatose financial bigwig who’s just sunk an entire stock exchange in Melbourne. Just go with it, ok? He currently spends all his time chewing with his mouth open and informing his wife that no money = no love. Meet his wife, Mrs. Khanna (a well dressed Kareena Kapoor), a pathetically grateful and somewhat duh orphan who repeatedly thanks him for “giving her the name that God forgot to give her”. Here, use this bucket to throw up. Feel better? Ok. Now meet Aakash (Sohail Khan heroically portraying all the emotions from A to A-and-a-half), the sap whose response to his parents’ disastrous marriage and subsequent divorce is to fall for somebody else’s wife.

The story of these three somnambulists is about as entertaining and heartwarming as chomping into a hermetically sealed cucumber sandwich.

Aakash is possibly the most uninteresting lover ever seen on film. And I’ve seen Bharat Bhushan at work. He’s such a romantic succubus, he manages to suck the charm out of a Balika Badhu song of all things.

Samir goes from stonewalling his wife when she tries to support him in his hour of need to experiencing a fullblown crisis when… uh, actually I still haven’t figured this out. His doll-like wife doesn’t automatically respond to set cues after he disappeared on her for months and wouldn’t even answer her calls? Because she has friends of her own? Because she doesn’t realize her new best friend is in love with her?

I’m not being facetious – I really don’t understand what Samir’s deal was. After she spends months waiting for him and telling him how much she loves him, he tells her she’s “wrong” (about what?) and tells her she has to decide whether she wants to be with him… because some guy she’s not in love with is in love with her? What the fuck is that? Even by Bollywood standards that makes no sense. It’s like they came to the end of the shoot and suddenly realized, “Hey, wait a minute! Were we supposed to have a story for this thing? Hmm, well then let’s just give Samir something to cry about. We’ve got that Rahat Fateh Ali Khan song lying around anyway.” Solutions!

And of course, there’s the desirable Mrs. Khanna – who stays where she’s put and generally acts like a puppet. Unless she’s drunk, in which case she loses what few wits she has, apparently. Which seems to be a recurring theme in Kareena’s career. I’m just glad nobody’s concern-raped* her yet.

Wanted had a more affecting love story.

* For the uninitiated: “Concern-rape”. When a man rapes a woman out of concern for her health and safety. He’s just being helpful, see? Like so. Scroll down, it’s the third or fourth rape in that movie. My hero!