This movie Sucks!
There was a time when KJ's movies meant sheer sugar coated candy floss fun - and then he grew up, started making movies with a message, like KANK, in which the message was really a twisted one in the sense - you should start cheating on your wife/partner if you are bored with your life (?), and now MNIK, which spews out messages left, right and center like a dragon on viagara spitting fire. However, the messages seems to go just up in the air like a diwali fountain and come down to us as nothing. What exactly is KJ trying to do here - bring awareness to Aspergers Syndrome or racial/religious intolerance? If it was the former, he did not have to stretch it to almost 3 hours of unbearable nonsense to get there. If it was the latter, he has utterly failed, since I, like many, came out of there with more negative thoughts than positive after the movie. KJ seems to be trying hard to tackle a multitude of subjects, all related to religion - islamophobia, discrimination, intolerance, paranoia etc., and in the process seems to have lost his way completely.
The protagonist of the movie, played by SRK, who incidentally has done the role of his life in this movie, wanders around US (San Fransisco-Washington DC, Arizona, Georgia, LA) on his free will, trying to meet the American President, to convey his message that all Muslims are not terrorists. In the process, he ends up in a village called Wilhemina in Georgia???, saves the local community from flood (where were the US Army and FEMA-Federal Emergency Management Agency?), saves US from a possible terrorist attack, manages to get arrested and tortured by the US intelligence in US soil (impossible-ever heard of rendition?) and gets stabbed by a terrorist for being an informant. The last one, being more than just ridiculous, since the informant's identity is broadcasted all over the world on all TV channels. Obviously, KJ has not done proper homework on the subject or he would have known about the witness protection program in US. By the way, I wonder, if an autistic person, the Indian TV crew, the muslim community, the terrorist with a grudge and the hero's wife could all make it to the flood affected Georgian town, how come the 204 odd people of that community could not leave the town? How about the Sardarji who cuts his hair off for fear of being taken for a muslim post 9/11, but goes around with a beard looking even more of a muslim? Believe me, those are just a few of the many unanswered questions you get stuck with after the movie.
If only KJ had stuck to his tried and tested formula of boy meets girl, falls in love, gets married genre of movies and away from the too complicated subject for a non-intellectual, masala movie director, he could have walked away with a real winner. There was a story to be told of an autistic muslim man marrying a hindu single mom and their innner struggles post 9/11. But this was not to be. Instead we have been handed out a mess of a movie. Don't waste your money.