New Delhi, Dec 05: Kal Ho Naa Ho may put KKHH a bit in the shade, but one hopes that it does not foreshadow the future of Hindi cinema. In style and content, it belongs firmly to the past. Harmless fluff has never done anybody much harm. When it is coated with generous miles of Teflon layers, so much the better. My hunch, therefore, is that Kal Ho Naa Ho, Karan Johar's first film as a producer, will be a bigger commercial hit than his 1998 directorial debut, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.

If alien midget Jadoo could do such wonders for Koi... Mil Gaya, can't the Magic of our very own King Khan do the same for Kal Ho Naa Ho? Have faith in the K factor.

The film's got the buzz. And it's got the works - comedy, strong emotions, catchy songs, nifty dances and New York in all its Times Square glitter and glory. Add to that the truism that kitsch has its own logic no matter how designer it gets and an audience that has been fed on years of brain addling entertainment - both on the big screen and the idiot box - just love to watch Shahrukh Khan sway, swagger and pout as only he can. I must confess I also did quite enjoy the routine this time around.

Yet, I have a bone - actually, many a bone – to pick with our man Karan Johar. He seems like a decent bloke, a bright, young man who delivers hits in an era in which even a Subhash Ghai has lost his Midas touch. For sure, we need more Karan Johars - but please, for God's sake, not another of these saccharine tales of terminally ill guardian angels.

One minute you go ha ha, the next it's sob sob. Please, let's get this straight, Hrishikesh Mukherjee used to do it much better. Karan Johar would do well to look ahead and not scour the past for plots.
One of the most striking aspects of Kal Ho Naa Ho is that it makes absolutely no mention of its not-so-surreptitious sources of inspiration - Anand (the first half) and Safar (the second) - but it constantly alludes, sometimes quite directly, to its grand aspirations - Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai. KHNH parodies the 'Baar baar haan' number from Lagaan, and even takes a gentle pot shot at DCH while commenting on the hairstyle of a minor character, a DJ at a trance club. But, despite Anil 'Lagaan' Mehta's translucent cinematography, it doesn't quite get there!

After the corny K3G tagline (remember all that jazz about loving your parents?) caught the imagination of the nation, the young Johar had announced that he had had enough of pulpy designer films. Is that why he chose to part with the director's credit for Kal Ho Naa Ha and hand it on a platter to an erstwhile assistant?

Just as well. No matter what the box office has in store for KHNH, it is anything but a film that Johar should be proud of. It's as stale as yesterday's weather report. The film manipulates emotions quite unabashedly and, thanks to an in-form Shahrukh Khan, succeeds to a great extent.

KHNH is 70 per cent mirth, 20 per cent mush and 10 per cent confusion. Characters float in and out of frames uttering either "I love you" for nobody in particular or "I am confused" mostly for effect. Or is the recurrent confusion line a confession by producer-scriptwriter Karan Johar?

Well, it is sad that Shahrukh Khan has to die in the climax so that the film may live. The character he essays - it is clearly modelled on the happy-go-lucky dying hero of Anand - sacrifices his own love because he knows that his heart is destined to give up on him sooner than later.

He has his own "Babumoshai" equivalent in the form of the comely Sonali Bendre, a doc who flits in and out of the show until she vanishes completely when our weak-hearted hero needs her the most - on his death bed.

Even with a serious heart condition, he jumps off his hospital bed and huffs and puffs halfway across New York to shower his self-effacing benison on the union between the woman he secretly loves (Preity Zinta) and the Manhattan adman who rarely gets his lines right (Saif Ali Khan).

The story is actually the least of the film's problems. It is the script that lets it down badly. The tale is seen through the eyes of the grumpy heroine who learns to live and love when her family's prayers for the intervention of an angel is answered and out pops the hero with the heart of a saint.

Shouldn't she, then, be in every sequence of the film? That is what basic logic would suggest. But she isn't, and yet she is able to recount minute details of 20-year-old incidents that she couldn't have been party to, including her eventual hubby's encounters with a long-legged Gujju beauty who has her eyes on his dad's wealth. That's a huge flaw at the heart of the script. Fortunately for the makers, the masses might not be too be put off by such 'minor' anomalies.

Worse, KHNH is packed with silly collegian notions about girls who wear glasses, Gujjus who speak with thick accents and homosexuality, among other things. The heroine has to discard her thick-rimmed glasses to be accepted as normal - come on Karan, you can do better.
If having a weak heart is all right, why must an ocular problem be such a crime? When the bumbling Gujju adman is suspected of being gay because of misunderstandings over his proximity to the hero, his papa keeps asking him: "You are normal, na?" Why are people here so obsessed with normality?

The stereotyping takes on its worst form in the facile portrayal of the Gujarati community. The customary Punjabi wedding song is preceded by an embarrassingly raucous chorus by the Gujarati relatives of the adman who go "G-U-J-J-U Gujju" as if we didn't know. The "cool" Punjabis immediately show them up.

After a bout of condescending applause, the motley crowd, even the Gujjubhais, break into a robust Punjabi number and order is restored. Mera Punjab mahaan! Is Mr Narendra Modi clued in? If he is, he is unlikely to take kindly to this brazen trifling with Gujarati asmita! For once, his ire would actually be quite justified.