Kismat Konnection--the review

Kismat Konnection for me was another $10 gamble. I like Vidya Balan, 80-90% of her movies make at least some sense. Plus Aziz Mirza also usually doles out interesting stuff. Maybe this movie would change Shahid Kapoor's kismat...

The movie indeed starts and maintains interest for a while. Poor Raj Malhotra is all talent but rotten luck. Whatever has to go wrong, does. Enter Vidya Balan, his unsuspecting lucky charm, and his luck changes overnight thanks to her. Interesting, and full of potential. This "dream run" of the movie takes about the first one hour. After that its falls right back on earth.

Vidya Balan may be the kismat konnection for Shahid Kapoor, but her fiance in the movie is the kismat konnection for the audience. For when his short run in the movie ends predictably, the audience totally runs of luck. The love story of the two main characters then proceeds suspiciously along "Lage Raho Munnabhai" lines. There are deviations from the utterly predictable, but you miss them because they are few, far in between and quickly dampened by the utterly predictable. I enjoy the "filmy" melodramas of Bollywood where the director succeeds in making jaw-dropping U-turns to realize a happy ending, but this one really should've been left alone. For Shahid Kapoor's last stroke of luck in the movie is too much even for a movie.

Now the cast. Vidya Balan, as commented above, acts predictably for a character that is quite similar to her Munnabhai one. Her mis-costumes continue, alas. Shahid Kapoor repeatedly seems so much like he's trying to copy SRK that its difficult to give him points for acting. In this movie his hairstyle also matches SRK's DDLJ hairdo, further damning him. He should really try to carve out his own style because his current one is too SRK-like (not that that is bad, but seeming like a current star is hardly a road to stardom). He looks innocent, dances well...all in all displays his usual strengths and exposes his usual weaknesses. The only mildly entertaining character is that of Juhi Chawla, who graces us with an extended guest appearance. Nice touch, although easily lost in the overall mediocre product that is Kismat Konnection.

But undoubtedly the most irritating part of the experience is not the story, it is the music. Barring for the one title song (that seems well placed strictly in a relative sense), the music is bad, and is made worse by showing up at precisely those moments in the movie when the audience's patience is running thin.

Kismat Konnection: Shahid's other KK was surely luckier for him! I don't see the two K's saving this one.