A Salman Khan movie always has a great deal of hype surrounding it. When the label of comic king David Dhawan gets associated with it, and beauty queen Katrina Kaif makes her debut opposite her rumored real life boyfriend Salman, the USP’s start to build up. When the ever gorgeous Sushmita Sen is added to the mix with some extremely popular music with songs like ’’Just Chill Chill’’, the youth is bound to be awaiting this one eagerly. What more, even the promotion of this movie was almost automatic, what with Salman getting stuck in the infamous tape controversy.
Controversy thus added to hype and promotion was upto the mark right away. The movie made it’s way late in the markets, giving the impression that the public liked this one pretty well. Besides, for a commercial comedy, even the critical reviews weren’t bad. The bar of expectations was raised way too high. So does MPKK? succeed to deliver?
Honestly, MPKK? isn’t a bad movie to pass time. But when that three letter word gets associated with any movie, especially starring big names like the hunk Khan, some people, like yours truly, are bound to be let down even if the product is slightly mediocre. Here, that is almost exactly the case. The viewer expects way too much from an average product.
Frankly, the opening scene itself with Sohail in Katrina’s bedroom is childish, rather than hilarious. But the opening on a bad note is made up for once the main characters are introduced, mainly Salman and Sushmita. I admit that is where David picks up form right until the interval point. Everything, right from the wonderful frames (delightful camerawork to capture the beautiful Maldives) to entertaining jokes (from the entire starcast), becomes likeable about the movie. The first half goes running to the winning post. However, one factor that surprisingly doesn’t contribute, in my opinion, for the movie’s first half triumph, is its everpopular music. The songs, despite their great choreography and execution, are let down by their poor placement in the narrative, especially of ’’Just Chill Chill’’, also followed by another poor placement of the second best ’’Laga Prem Rog’’. The poor placement makes these otherwise good tunes seem unwanted in the narrative.
Nonetheless, the way Katrina’s character (Sonia) continues to ask Salman to introduce her to his family members one by one, is itself worthed for the entertainment value in the first half. The terrific situational comedy in this half sets up wonderfully for the second half.
Unfortunately, this half fails to entertain, as David misses the bus despite having an overall good plot at his disposal. David’s last hit with Salman, MUJHSE SHAADI KAROGI, had a decent second half with entertainment continuing to build up till the predictable, yet very well executed climax. Here, not only is the climax a failure for David (it comes 10-15 minutes before the end, making the last scenes quite boring due to their great predictability), but also the post-interval is quite boring as the jokes become stale and the story stagnates.
That is, the post interval that lead up to the climax are quite below the mark in their own right, and then they are followed by a highly predictable climax (Who usually wins the hero in Bollywood...a mod and stylish girl or a conservative type girl? Well don’t all of us, even those who haven’t caught this one yet, know who will win Salman?). The entertainment value thus minimizes. This is very much unlike Salman’s latest flick, NO ENTRY, that beats this movie all the way, particularly in the second half, in terms of entertainment.
Peformancewise, only Sushmita Sen stands out. She has the meatiest and most reasonably entertaining part and the evergreen, gorgeous, and sensational Sush proves with her charismatic performance that her time has arrived for sure. If she beat SRK, in my opinion, to become the main reason to catch Main Hoon Na more than once in theatres, here she overcomes Salman too to become a solo reason to catch and recommend this one to others. Overall, a triumph all the way for a lady who deserves it.
Salman Khan tries hard, but his role is challenged by poor scripting, especially in the second half where he is forced to act like a puppet infront of his mother. Unlike the Sameer of MUJHSE SHAADI KAROGI, whose emotions were well developed by David towards the second half, Sameer here is forced to overact post-interval (primarily the director’s fault in my opinion). Therefore, it is only Salman’s charisma and a decent first half performance that saved him from being hammered by the critics for performing in such an immature way all the way through to the climax in the second half.
Sohail Khan too has a short role, that of an extra type, yet he manages to make a mark with his witty and likeable performance that entertains well in parts. Katrina Kaif is quite beautiful and glamorous, no doubt, but the news of her voice being dubbed leaves the audience’s judgment of her pending in terms of performance until she uses her own voice. While Isha Koppikar has no role as such to discuss, Arshad Warsi and Rajpal Yadav are impressive with their hilarious comic cameos. However, the same cannot be said about David due to a poor second half direction.
Overall, a passable product due to the few above mentioned pros, though a very reluctant recommendation from my side due to the hard-to-ignore cons. Go catch it as ’’once a dekko’’, at least for Sush! May be she can help overshadow the cons and bring a smile on your face.