Director: Siddharth P Malhotra
Cast: Kajol, Kareena, Arjun Rampal, Aanchal Munjal
Rating: ***

By now the world knows that Karan Johar’s We Are Family is an ‘official’ remake of Hollywood flick Stepmom (1999). What many might not know is that even the original wasn’t absolutely original and derived its roots from a 1950 film No Sad Songs For Me or the 1995 American TV series The Other Woman.

Here you have a screenplay originally credited to five Hollywood writers and Indianized by two Bollywood counterparts. By Indianizing Karan Johar doesn’t intend to place the plot in India. The producer can’t get over the NRI fixation and this time stations his story in Australia. Also perhaps an Indian setting could have been less convincing for the fact that a sauteli maa won’t be as sought after as the successor for the kids in a country where extended joint families would be a better bet. The nuclear NRI family setup gives more significance to the being of a stepmom.
For the makers, adding own elements equates to populating the plot with three kids instead of two in the original. Of course director Siddharth Malhotra, an erstwhile assistant to Sooraj Barjatya, also appends a marriage ceremony as an epilogue to the narrative.
The story is about Aman (Arjun Rampal) and Maya (Kajol) who are divorced yet cordially connected for the sake of their three kids. Aman has found new love in Shreya (Kareena Kapoor) and wants her to warm up to his kids. Despite Shreya’s genuine attempts, the kids give her a cold shoulder. And Maya doesn’t want Shreya to be anywhere in the close vicinity of her children. Until she is diagnosed of cervical cancer! Having only a few months to survive, Maya’s prime concern is the future of her kids and suddenly she sees Shreya as her ideal substitute.

Malhotra’s storytelling is crisp and he doesn’t splurge any screen-time in elaborating the background account of Aman and Maya or what lead to their separation. You never know or wish to know what went wrong between the two but at the same time also wonder what makes them so amiable despite the divorce. But you surely wish to know what happened to Karan Johar’s Indian culture endorsement when, in a scene, the mother apologizes to her eldest daughter for being responsible for her uncool persona by not allowing her to booze or have fun with boys. A sequence straight out of Baghban (the Rimi Sen – Hema Malini sequence), it doesn’t go in sync with the family feel of the film but culminates more prudently.

The terminally-ill protagonist in the film evidently brings back memories of Karan Johar’s earlier production Kal Ho Na Ho. But this one doesn’t succeed in becoming as optimistic and cheerful as the earlier attempt. Though the dying protagonist in both films believe in living life to the fullest, the female patient in We Are Family largely shapes the film as a tearjerker unlike the lighthearted effervescence of SRK’s KHNH. Also unlike KHNH where the therapeutic procedure was restricted to a single hospital scene in the climax, here the medical ordeal of Kajol is prolonged in the second half. Thankfully Malhotra evades the inevitable death sequence like in KHNH but not before including a long-drawn-out family photograph sentimental scene.