KANK, Karan Johar's best film

I am no Karan Johar fan. His Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham did not impress me.

But when he announced his new movie, Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, I was intrigued. After all, it had all the top stars, and told a story not very typical of Johar's movies.

I enjoyed KANK. It was no Closer like I expected it to be. Instead, we had two unhappily married couples -- Dev (Shah Rukh Khan) and Riya (Preity Zinta), and Rishi (Abhishek Bachchan) and Maya Talwar (Rani Mukerji), trying to lead happy lives.

Dev is a failed football player who had to make do with being a coach, thanks to an injury, while his super successful wife Riya -- a fashion magazine editor -- is juggling work with home. Of course, jealously raises its ugly head, as Dev realises that Riya wears the pants in the house.

On the other hand, Rishi, an event manager, married to a school teacher (Maya), is unhappy, as Maya never seems to reciprocate the love he feels for her.

As the film progresses, Dev and Maya fall out of love with their respective spouses and fall in love with each other, indulging in an extra marital affair.

Now, Karan Johar has never tried going beyond traditional values in his films before, and KANK is a first. But the director has managed to delve into a bold film with promise.

Dev is not the perfect loverboy, we expect him to be in this film. Instead, he has a limp, is a failure in life, and looks beyond his marriage.

Maya -- Rani Mukerji, who has the lion's share of the screen time -- is not the regular pativrata woman one expects Karan's heroines to be. She has opinions of her own, does not like her husband's flamboyance, and finally, wants to live life on her own terms.

Their respective spouses, on the other hand, are not the villains they would have been in a 1980s or even 1990s films.

Riya always puts her career before her marriage. While she would easily have been the vamp in a film before this era, she is softer and identifiable. She loves her school football coaching husband, but understands that she needs to put in extra hours of work to buy that playstation her son likes.

Rishi truly loves his wife, and doesn't care about the fact that she can't bear children. For him, his life revolves around his public relations firm, his wife and his father's (Amitabh Bachchan) string of women.

The actors do their part well. But there's no doubt Abhishek is the best of the lot. The actor seems to be finally emerging from his father's shadow and showing off his talent well.

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