Search - My Name Is Khan on DVD

Too Much Cheese for One Movie...

stop the hype | 09/28/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

"One day aliens will land on Earth to offer mankind answers to the secrets of the universe. But because of films like 'My Name is Khan' they will deem us unworthy and return to the Heavens once more in their cheese-free interstellar cruisers. 'My Name is Khan', quite frankly, is overblown and needlessly sugar-coated.
Rather than go the long way around to your emotions, (you know, with sympathetic characters and good writing), Karan Johar uses movie shortcuts like retarded people, cute kids and blaring dramatic music. The story of 'My Name is Khan' is so unrealistic that it could only take place in a parallel universe. Its a mentally-challenged melodrama of self-aggrandizing proportions and its 2 hours of poorly written dialogue sum up the substance of the movie.
Of course its a Karan Johar film, and subtlety goes flying out the window - but its time Bollywood references to 9/11, jihad, and overdone shots of the Koran, apart from the frustratingly forced sequences involving 'The Meek Protagonist' suddenly turning into 'The Bollywood Hero' (in this case Mr Rizwan Khan saves an African-American family from floods) .
A movie where Shahrukh Khan meets Barack Obama to win his wife back is less drama and more Science Fiction. But that would have been fine had the film not been a never ending, numbing melodramatic nothingness drowned in the sticky syrup that a doctor prescribes to you as a remedy for cough. My Name is Khan's script (by Shibani Bathija) is intellectually vapid, and should come with a blood sugar alert what with its layers of cheese. Like other Kjo films, the script is soggy and flamboyantly manipulative. It lacks focus and consistency of approach, and the end result is a mixture of emotional manipulation and laughable caricature. If racism is so pervasive in today's world, why do we need such an elaborately contrived plot to drive home the message? The film's real message isn't anti-racism but pro-star power and pro-cinematographer - My Name is Khan seems to shout 'Look its Shahrukh Khan!' and 'Look how gorgeous the film looks!'
Director Karan Johar, the visionary that he is, injects new life into the stale Bollywood drama genre by introducing a mentally handicapped leading man and his loving wife, only to pull the rug from under us by transposing their roles when you least expect it. The acting is expectedly over the top, but MNIK thankfully does not completely reduce SRK, one of the best screen actors of all time, to a mugging embarrassment. Shahrukh really tries hard to dole up a studied, thoughtful performance, but the story is just terrible and written, no doubt, to accommodate several agendas. The ploy works, for SRK's Rizwan Khan WILL melt fans' hearts and leave them chanting, 'Filmfare award! Filmfare award!! Get this guy a Filmfare award!!'
The leading lady has a solid screen presence but the much-hyped jodi of Shahrukh and Kajol disappoints, because the duo are not in sync with the fundamentals and intricacies of the people they play. Jimmy Shergill remains as rigid as a bookcase while the half a dozen cameos (particularly Vinay Pathak and Sumeet Raghavan) are criminally misused. However Tanay Chheda who plays the young Rizwan is extraordinary, while Arjan Aulja and Sonya Jehan are excellent. Apart from Noor-E-Khuda, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy's music does not work but Ravi K. Chandran's eye-popping cinematography certainly does - the imagery of Georgia will especially linger in your mind long after you've left the theater. The editing should have been given a once over since 'My Name is Khan' really drags in its second half.
Mihir Fadnavis

Rain Man (Special Edition)
Forrest Gump (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition)"

Grotesque, very long, boring amd vexing, more than engaging

Line of beauty in jazz | Miami, FL | 10/01/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

"The global appeal of My Name is Khan is also no doubt due to the fact that it deals with the themes of terrorism and the West's war upon it, tracing the devastating impact of 9/11 on a Muslim man (and his family) living in America...
Unfortunately, the film fails to live up to the promise of this opening. While the love story is moving and there are some emotionally powerful scenes, the film's central message is finally just banal. As a boy, Khan learns from his mother that the fighting between Hindu and Muslim is pointless and wrong since there are only two kinds of people in the world, `good' people and `bad' people. The only result of hatred and intolerance is, we learn, many mothers' tears. Khan's marriage to a Hindu woman demonstrates his own inability to hate, his own `goodness'. Yet, rather than the message being a means to overcome divisions caused by identity politics, the tolerance the film preaches is a means of reinforcing an acceptance of separate identities. The post 9/11 discrimination Muslims face forces them to hide the outward symbols of their ethnic and religious identities. Khan's determination to overcome this prejudice encourages other Muslims to reclaim these symbols again, pointedly demonstrated by Khan's sister-in-law Haseena (Sonya Jeehan) who re-embraces her hijab as a part of her denied self.

In post 9/11 America, Khan remembers his mother's teaching well. So, rather than a serious and intelligent study of the political impact of the 9/11 attacks on American Muslims, the film unfortunately descends into a simplistic morality tale. While the landscapes of Khan's American travels are spectacular, the people he meets are grotesque caricatures. White America is unrelentingly `bad', racist and violent, while black America is depicted as `good' in the soulful victims of a hurricane `Mama Jenny' (Jennifer Echols) and her son `Crazy hair' Joel (Adrian Kali Turner).

The most grotesque caricatures come, however, in the person of the US presidents. George W Bush and his followers represent the hate and fear that must be overcome by dark-skinned people in the US and worldwide. Obama represents a new dawn, the possibilities of love, hope and peace: not just in his politics but in the colour of his skin, he offers something new, something `good'. It bears pointing out that the black-and-white morality of the film is simply a mirror image of the War on Terror itself, with Bush's position that `You are either with us or against us' flipped; the good guys are differently cast but no political complexity is added, indeed it is simplified further.

It is perhaps refreshing to see a depiction of black America redeeming the sins of white America and interesting to have a portrait of post 9/11 politics as seen through Muslim eyes. In one of the best scenes, Khan is refused entry to a charity dinner at which the president is speaking, despite having the £500 entrance fee, since he is not a Christian. He instructs the administrator to keep his entrance fee `for all the non-Christians in Africa'. The film admirably punctures hypocrisy but ultimately it tries to do too much, to be too many things, to be too worthy, and to solve the world's problems.

The central and most interesting issue the film sets out to deal with - how Muslims experience and respond to life in post 9/11 America - becomes obscured and caricatured and finally obliterated so that what is left is a kind of postcolonial "Forrest Gump". Is life really just a box of chocolates?. Cheryl Hudson
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HUGE Disappointment

Linda Carey | Newbury Park, CA USA | 09/30/2010

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Two of my favorite Indian actors in one of the worst movies I've EVER seen. Please read the reviews before you buy this and consider the negative ones most carefully. The racial/political/religous opinions in this film make it uncomfortable to watch and impossible to ignore. The message is anti-Christian, anti-American, and politically offensive."