KHGN is pleasant, funny, with good characters. Review on Kyun! Ho Gaya Na

Overall I give Kyon Ho Gaya Na a 9.5/10. Without a doubt, it is one of my three favorite movies from the fifteen or so I saw last year!

There's a review on the BBC website that says KHGN is the liveliest movie to emerge from India in some time, and feels far more fresh than it should given its love-story subject matter. I completely agree.

I am shocked that KHGN flopped at the box office ... I'm wondering if people in India watched a different version of the movie than I did, at this point!

Here are some more thoughts I have on the movie:

Thankfully, KHGN bucks the boring and Westernized trends in Bollywood of late. There's still a lot of English ... But the emotional and family scenes are there; the lingering shots are there; there's an angry heroic speech (this is the scene that made me cry!); the songs are there, not nearly as Westernized as I thought from the one song that kept being played; and the setting is India, both urban and rural. Vivek's happy-go-lucky 20-something is also not much like Saif's immature jerk in Hum Tum, thank goodness!

However, KHGN is not your typical Bollywood love story of yesteryear. Perhaps inspired by Kal Ho Naa Ho, it parodies dramatic film scenes at the same time that it also delivers genuine ones. Somehow it all works and you don't feel cheated. Also, the movie is strong from a feminist perspective. And, the characterization of the leads feels less caricatured and more subtle than in some older movies. And, camera angles also seem very different even though the lingering shots are still there.

Vivek and Ash are a supercouple on screen! They are on fire ... I don't know if it's the lighting, but Vivek is positively radiant -- and his soulful glances are jaw-dropping. Ash is still kind of bland, but Vivek totally makes up for it.

But Ash isn't bad at all; she's good. This could well be my favorite Aishwarya performance yet (other than the Tamil movie Kandukondain Kandukondain)!

There are many great scenes ... Funny ... Romantic ... Dramatic ... All are smart, and many are ''different'' in terms of how they are shot and/or how they are written. I can't even begin to list them all. A few favorites are the arranged marriage discussion at the bar, the pickpocket stuff, the train scene, the dish-washing scene, the bowling scene, the goal, all the handshake stuff, the speech about Parth, and the hunt.

It's great that Ash is the first to say something, and it's also great to see her move on afterward when that doesn't turn out well, rather than ''needing her man''. The movie features a strong female character.

The switch of settings in the second half really works. It's an effective use of the interval, rather than just picking up where the movie left off. I was caught off-guard wondering WHAT was going on for a few minutes, but those first few minutes of the second half really show us what Amitabh's character is like in this movie. I think ''C'mon Charlie'' is supposed to be a pirate reference myself ... But I am confused about that. Someone else said American soldiers used it in the Vietnam war to refer to the Vietcong (''Victor Charlie'').

The special appearance is well done.

The ending is nice.

Overall, the first half is stronger than the second half, but both are memorable.

Some have said that there is ''no story'', ''no obstacles'', or ''no drama''; I would have to disagree. I was definitely feeling the drama toward the end (especially because I didn't see certain twists coming). But the strength of the characters and the acting is what makes this movie special ... As some have mentioned elsewhere, this is a character-driven movie.

Wow, all this and I haven't even mentioned the BREATHTAKING scenery yet. I loved the opening shots of the movie and the song with the young Tibetan kids.

Speaking of songs, it seems that many of the songs had just okay picturizations (not much showing of what the lyrics mean ... Sometimes you can use visuals to guess at the meaning of songs even without subtitles, but not in this case). But it is unfair to judge without knowing the https://lyrics. (I don't speak Hindi, and rely on English subtitles.)

However, I definitely feel the songs fit well into the story, with the exception of the sexy danceclub number.

Some complaints:

The car racing stuff was mehhh for me. The fancy screen effects left me cold. The car racing did set up Arjun's attitude toward competition though.

There was a minor problem with the ending. They could have switched the order around a little with the ''reveal'', it would have been more dramatic.

I'll say it again, Kyun! Ho Gaya Na is one of the three best movies I've seen from last year. (''Phir Milenge'' and ''Swades'' are the other ones.)

A smashing -- or should I say ''mindblowing'' -- debut by director Samir Karnik.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.