We Are Family Movie Reviews

Okay, WE ARE FAMILY is the official adaptation of Chris Columbus' STEPMOM [1998] and lots of us have already watched this Julia Roberts - Susan Sarandon starrer. Even otherwise, the story of a woman, diagnosed with a terminal illness, entrusting her kids to the 'other woman' before she does the final salute, gives the feeling of deja vu. But WE ARE FAMILY is not a tear-jerker. Sure, it has dollops of emotions, but also integrates the light moments wonderfully in those 12 reels.

First things first. Thank God, it's all above board and legal. Producer Karan Johar displays a professionalism (and takes care of the legalese) by crediting the film to its original, Chris Columbus' Stepmom (1998) which won hearts with it's countless-wet-hankies emotional saga of Susan Sarandon and Julia Roberts fighting for the supermom title. So much so, that once you know that, you don't actually mind the fact that the film is a scene by scene lift of the original

There is really just one scene in We Are Family that has any emotional traction. And that can only be bad news for a professed tearjerker. The scene in question works primarily because of Kajol. As a terminally ill mother lying in a hospital bed, she tells the would-be stepmom of her children (Kareena Kapoor) that she is their past and the latter their future, playing on the word 'kal' (yesterday and tomorrow, jaanewala and aanewala). Sob, sob!

It’s this thing about soppy chick flicks, or afternoon soppy soap operas, if you will. The male character is destined to severe step-mom treatment. If he’s present at all, he usually has no say in his own destiny. He quietly follows nature’s will. Humour is generally scarce. This fits in well with the female worldview, perhaps (okay, that’s a joke!). It doesn’t help include varied audiences. Arjun Rampal plays that muted, pointless gent in this movie adapted from Chris Columbus’s Stepmom (1998).

If 'We Are Family', starring Kajol and Kareena Kapoor, fails to pack the emotional wallop of 'Stepmom', blame it on the insipid writing. It took five writers and a shamelessly manipulative script to put Stepmom on the screen 12 years ago, and despite its lack of subtlety, that film still delivered at least a few genuine lump-in-your throat moments. The same unfortunately can't be said for director Siddharth Malhotra's 'We Are Family'

Okay, We Are Family is Stepmom, we all know that. Buying official rights means the makers can unabashedly retain elements, even dialogues, from the original. And they have. Remember ‘stepmom’ Julia Roberts telling ‘mom’ Susan Sarandon about how she will deck up her elder daughter for her wedding years later? This one has our desi Roberts (Kapoor) saying the exact same words to Sarandon aka Kajol, only in Hindi. This is no adaptation

Finally, Karan Johar has made a film with a title that bluntly states what the rest of us have suspected all along, that they are family, while we are just the outsiders paying for the tickets. We Are Family is an official remake; thankfully Bollywood is finally giving due credit to the Hollywood film Stepmom, a slightly surprising choice for Indian audiences.

We Are Family begins on a note of confusion. As the film progresses, the sense of confusion increases leaving the viewer disoriented. At the end of two hours, debut director Sidharth Malhotra's film -- which is intended to be a sob story -- did leave the audience in tears. Of boredom. Arjun Rampal is divorced and his kids live with his ex-wife Kajol (Maya). He's been in a relationship with Kareena Kapoor (Shreya) for the last three years

‘We Are Family’ will not work at the box-office except in select multiplexes of the big cities. But that’s j...