From Shaitan to Always Kabhi Kabhi: The kids are definitely not alright

By Rajyasree Sen I started the week with Shaitan, a film about a bunch of bored and murderous teenagers and ended it with Always Kabhi Kahbi, bored and wishing someone would just murder these teenagers. Shah Rukh Khan’s new magnum opus is more in the news these days as the launchpad for Zoa Morani, daughter of Karim Morani, Shah Rukh’s best bud and 2G king. But I left the theatre mostly concerned about today’s teenagers. Going by the two films, today’s kids are either deviants or doofuses. They are definitely not alright. Remember Jo Jeeta Wahi Sikander and how it made it cool to be in school? The film even made Ayesha Jhulka look cool. Whether it was Pooja Bedi as the school hotty, or Aamir and Deepak Tijori’s rivalry, or the budding romance between duckface Jhulka and Aamir – the film made it all seem quite believable and very entertaining. Good music, snappy dialogues, the birth of Farah Khan as a choreographer, a nice fun script – it definitely was a new genre of film. [caption id=“attachment_28234” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Always Kabhi Kabhi is ‘inspired’ by Grease and Glee, and looks like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai but with completely forgettable characters. Image courtesy: ibnlive.in.com”]  [/caption] Always Kabhi Kabhi, on the other hand, is obviously ‘inspired’ by Grease and Glee, and looks like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai but with completely forgettable characters. Since it has King Khan’s wallets funding it and most probably Daddy Morani’s also, the film looks slick. But that’s about it. Set in a posh Delhi school which looks like a Scottish castle but is actually La Martiniere in Lucknow, it deals with the very banal trials and tribulations of a quartet of Class XII students. Shaitan, set in south Bombay, shows a bunch of rich kids going haywire and pays homage to Tarantino and his gratuitous violence and beautiful fight sequences.  The kids are street-smart and occasionally witty and good looking. There are no excuses made for their deviant behaviour. They’re bored and have too much time on hand. What binds them to the kids in Always Kabhi Kabhi, is that both sets of teens have parents who are either self-involved or cloying or too ambitious or just plain schizo. The kids just needed to be walloped a little as children and they would have turned out fine. Where’s Tiger Mom when you need her? Shaitan’s characters, remorseless as they are, are highly plausible. We’ve all met and seen these relatively bright, rich kids with money to blow and not a care in the world. We’ve definitely read about a bunch of them — snorting coke, blowing up money, riding around in their Hummer and ultimately running over a bunch of people. The Always Kabhi Kabhi kids are a lot tamer – and much less believable as a result. They roam around Friendspace (the celluloid version of Facebook) in virtual life. In their real lives they roam around Delhi on bikes, not Harleys or Enfields, but Hero Hondas. Why they’d be riding around on a Hero Honda, despite studying in their fancy school is inexplicable. Always Kabhi Kabhi has an alternate sense of reality heightened by its strange lingo — part-Harlem, part-South Bombay, part-Saket. Couple that with a group of highly forgettable and strange teenagers. There’s a very lanky, not very attractive boy who’s the hero. I guess he is supposed to be John Travolta – although Travolta would die a million deaths if he ever saw this chap. He’s the school dude who has a change of heart after meeting lady love. Which brings us to Sandy, the Olivia Newton-John character, acted by Giselle Monteirro of Love Aaj Kal fame. All waifish and butter-won’t-melt-in-my-mouth and being pushed into modeling and acting by her Joan Crawford-ish mom.  There’s a chocolate boy second lead, who’s the only one who seems to study or have an IQ above 18. And there’s the belle of the ball whom the film’s been made for – Zoa Morani. She’s the wild thing who’s actually a little girl at heart and just wants her parents to spend time with her. Awww. She even resembles Stockard Channing who played Betty Rizzo in Grease and gets knocked up like her in the film. But since Always was already too long, they made it into a false pregnancy scare. Morani has a bawdy over-confidence, can act and is the only highlight of the film. But to imagine her as a school kid you have to think she’s flunked a couple of years, or taken some growth drugs which we are not privy to. Giselle Monteiro, on the other hand, looks the part, but is highly forgettable. Other plotlines in the film include cops pestering one of the kids for a bribe after a drug raid, an overly-ambitious dad whose career goal for his son is MIT or nothing and the school performance of Romeo and Juliet. But instead of Romeo and Juliet, this bunch of prodigies performs a rap-Glee musical number lecturing their parents on parental skills. It’s all very odd. By the end of the film, I felt like calling the Shaitan kids and asking them to run this bunch over. Because if indeed, as coke queen Whitney Houston has sung to us, these children are our future, we should be afraid. We should be very afraid. Rajyasree Sen is a restaurateur, TV connoisseur and unsolicited opinion-giver.