Cast: Salman Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Om Puri, Jackie Shroff, Rimii
Director: Priyadarshan
Genre: Drama/ Tragedy
Storyline: A mentally ill patient finds a compassionate doctor who changes his life, almost.
Bottomline: It’s a comedy.
We always knew that Priyadarshan is brilliant at comedy but trust him to make a tragedy with great potential look like an outrageous spoof.
So much that what should be a poignant end comes across as a whacky parody, as the audience cheers.
The publicist must have had his tongue in cheek to tag ‘Kyon ki…’ with a line like “It’s fate” giving the crowd enough scope for jokes on why they showed up for the movie.
‘Kyon ki’ fails because it’s ridden with cliches.
The stereotyped portrayal of the mentally ill is so old-fashioned and insensitive that whoever thought of it needs rehabilitation.
Salman as Anand tries earnestly to lend the film some of his charm but the characterisation makes him look mentally ill even in the portions when he is not supposed to be. Especially, when he’s stalking the heroine, spray-painting her room with ‘I Love You’ graffiti and vandalising roads with cornball “I like you. You like me.”
And the hip and fashionable girl he chases, Maya (Rimii) turns out to be a nun in the making. A freak tragedy later, Anand finds himself in the asylum with a kind-hearted doctor who doubles up as the local barber and Gillette-model, who gives the already clean-shaven Salman a shave and even rubs her cheek against his to demonstrate what a fine job she has done.
Thanks to such unconventional tactics of cure employed by Dr.Tanvi (Kareena) and Dr.Sunil Bhaiyya (Bhaiyya must be Jackie Shroff’s surname in the movie because everyone calls him that), Anand recovers in record time.
Now, Anand is not your regular mentally ill patient. Before he turned mentally ill, he spent hours painstakingly detailing the flashback with songs, lyrics, tune, mp3 clips, music videos etc. This kind of detailing helps Tanvi and Sunil cure Anand through a radical approach: the making-patient-run-around-woods-somersault-music-therapy.
‘Kyon ki…’ is easily 20 or 25 years late. Guaranteed to have Mohanlal (‘Thalavattom’) cringe and Jack Nicholson (‘One who flew over the cuckoo’s nest’) turn mentally ill.
Ken Kasey, the writer of ‘One who flew..,’ is said to have been upset that filmmakers were “butchering” his book until he caught it on TV one day while flipping channels. Considering he died four years ago, he must be turning in his grave.
‘Kyun Ki..’ It’s fate. Indeed.
MADRAS INK. 
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