KI & KA (my review) : Bread-earner v/s House-maker!

Though its too personal to share on a public space but sometimes i wonder how much my mother was responsible for not letting my father climbing up the success ladder in his career! I have images of my parents arguing over this issue when i was growing up. Both of them being the bread earners of the family, day to day ego clashes & issues like 'who's gonna cook so much food at the end of the day', 'who's gonna pay the bills' 'who's work being more stressful on an everyday basis' did erupt every now & then. And given the fact that my dad has always been the lazy bone, he would have 'kab ka' happily retired from his job if not for smooth sailing of the family on a financial basis. So even though Ki & Ka did receive extreme mixed reviews form the public & critics alike, the film did connect with me on some level.

More than breaking the gender stereotypes, i saw it more as a clash between the bread earner v/s the house maker, at times when success & over commitment of one partner becomes indigestible for the other paving towards commencement of disputes between them leading towards more problems like in the beautifully written scene where Jaya Bachhan asks Amitabh (playing themselves) would it have made any different if she was working full fledged and him managing the kitchen ( evoking memories of their Abhimaan, one of the best films made about marriage and ego). It felt good to see finally the woman (who's been playing the boss all the while) jealous of his house-husband getting attention & more fame overnight. I particularly liked the scene towards the climax when she lashes out at him into a reason less rage for using her for his fame. Kareena is bang on as the heroine who finally slips into an egoistic, career obsessive man's role & acts like one, something which we have been used to seeing our 'larger than life' heroes in indian film and more so on indian tele-series'. Arjun Kapoor deserves some credit too for agreeing to play the part, he actually tends to be more like the child-man who's best in playing his submissive part, hence few scenes like the sudden dhishum dhishum dharmendra act with the goons at the middle of the night seems out of place.

What didn't work for me were the dialogues, at times cliched & too much stressful into proving a point & the camera angles were too bad with sudden zooming in & out of focus. A gem of a star Swaroop Sampat was rather too disappointing with her bad dialogue delivery & Rajit Kapoor was wasted. The film could have worked more if it hadn't tried too hard to lure the masses & sudden abruptness of the plot here & there.