Okay, now you just can’t go for a Karan Johar movie and expect intel­lec­tual stim­u­la­tion. So don’t expect won­ders when you’re watch­ing KANK.

I was keen to watch the movie on the day it was released (for some rea­son I have this fas­ci­na­tion for watch­ing movies the day it gets released), but we couldn’t get tick­ets, so we had to wait till Sunday.

Mean­while. My hair grew 2 inches in anticipation.

And then. Alas! Raja Sen’s review on Rediff.com scares us greatly, but come Sun­day and for­ti­fied by a few vodka swigs (my friend’s hubby, not me :) we set off to watch the much awaited multi-starrer.

I’m seri­ous here. The one thing I would highly rec­om­mend the movie for is Rani’s… jew­ellery. And I kid you not. I have no idea where she (or her cos­tume depart­ment) has been buy­ing her jew­ellery, but I’ve taken copi­ous notes and intend to write to them soon in the hope that they’ll reveal their sources.

Sec­ondly, every­one in the movie is per­fect. And frankly, on screen, I’d rather see them per­fect, than the weak and flawed char­ac­ters we are in real life. If you thought that it’s not pos­si­ble to wear high heels while vac­u­um­ing, watch this movie and you’ll find out how wrong your per­cep­tions are. In one clean­ing scene, Rani is actu­ally wear­ing clothes that you and I would wear to a party and high heels, look­ing like she walked out of the cover page of Fem­ina. Thank you very much. Abhishek is the per­fect hus­band. He’s lov­ing, car­ing, dot­ing and an absolute hunk to boot (and we all know, they don’t make ‘em like that anymore).

Back to the action. I actu­ally got my thrills mostly through Abhishek (some­body tell me how and when he turned into such a hot­tie?) and father Amitabh. They have the best lines. Cor­rec­tion, Amitabh has the best lines. For exam­ple:
Abhi: Dude, what did you have for break­fast?
Amitabh (dis­tracted): Hmm? What? Oh, I can’t remem­ber her name.

Amitabh: If you do this for me, the Fer­rari you love is all yours.
Abhi (look­ing scan­dal­ized): Dude, if you think you can buy me off with a bribe, you’re absolute­ly…. right! (High five).

Okay. Com­ing back to the shin­ing aspect of the movie. Rani’s jew­ellery. Every­thing matches, from her blouse to her saree, to her eye make-up. (Note to myself: Damn. I need to work on my look).

Then there’s Pre­ity with her dim­ples and high kick. You have to check her out exe­cut­ing a HIGH KICK dur­ing the song, Where’s the party tonight? You’re prob­a­bly say­ing that any­one can exe­cute a high kick, but try it with 10 inch heels, dude!

Pre­ity rocks. Unfor­tu­nately she and Abhishek don’t get together in the end (spoiler, spoiler!). Sigh.

But let me be frank. I think Rani was def­i­nitely out of her mind in the movie. And I don’t mean this in a flat­ter­ing way at all.

I mean, why (why on earth) would any­one in her right mind leave hunka­li­cious ador­ing Abhi (who actu­ally loves her and wor­ships the earth she walks on and says the nicest things to her and makes her feel like a queen!) for Shahrukh annoy­ing Khan? Let’s face it — his twitches and exten­sive face move­ments can­not turn on a woman in her right mind. So what was Rani thinking?

The ques­tion I should be ask­ing is: what was Karan Johar thinking?

I know, I sound con­fused, but I swear I actu­ally enjoyed most of the movie. Till about one hour after the inter­val, which is where Johar should have ended it.

But, but… get­ting car­ried away by your own movie can be a haz­ard, as we learn from KANK. With four beau­ti­ful per­fectly turned out stars (not to men­tion the crores he’s had to pay them) Johar tries his best to extend their screen time. After killing off Amitabh (another spoiler) he doesn’t know when to call the end an end. Basi­cally, he doesn’t know when to say ‘ALVIDA” to his own movie.

Caught in this KANK dilemma, the last part gets a lit­tle painful. And Rani’s not wear­ing much jew­ellery any­more so there’s no dis­trac­tion (for me, at least).

You lit­er­ally feel like push­ing them both of together (Rani and Shahrukh) but since this ain’t no inter­ac­tive movie, one has to wait for another hour and a half. Mean­while the years go by (another 3 years, and yet another spoiler).

Believe me, by the end of the movie, you’ll under­stand what it feels like when 3 years passes by in real time. There’s this song where its snow­ing and you lit­er­ally feel like pulling your hair out and scream­ing, all right, enough already, just get them together and get on with your next movie, dude.

Any­way. I’m not say­ing it’s a bad movie. It’s quite enjoy­able if you can get past these lit­tle irri­tants. Styl­ishly shot. Sit­ting in India, in the com­fort of your plush seat, you get a glimpse of sights and sounds of New York in all its techni-colour glory. And there are some nice songs, my favourite ones being Mitwa and Where’s the party tonight. And some sur­prise guest appear­ances (I won’t spoil this one for you) but there’s another hot­tie who graces the screen for a bit).

And then (in case it’s slipped your mind) there’s Rani’s gor­geous jew­ellery and her colour coor­di­nated clothes. Def­i­nitely worth the 100 bucks I spent on my ticket. Besides, I rarely ever have any­thing bet­ter to do on a Sun­day afternoon.

Please do go and watch it and let me know what you thought of… Rani’s jew­ellery, of course. Man­ish Mal­ho­tra gains 10 brownie points for her wardrobe and I think I need a new one.