By Sachin Chatte

Film: We are Family, Cast: Kajol, Kareena Kapoor, Arjun Rampal, Directed by: Siddharth Malhotra, Duration: 119 minutes, Rating: * *
For a change, this one is legally adapted from the 1998 hit Stepmom starring Susan Sarandon, Julia Roberts and Ed Harris.

For the viewer it doesn’t quite make a difference if the story is legally copied or just lifted, even though the new trend is for the better but what matters to the audience is the final product.  And, unfortunately, We are Family directed by Siddharth Malhotra and produced by Karan Johar doesn’t give enough reason to cheer. At the most, it manipulates those who like emotional drama to shed some tears, but as a film it falls fairly flat.
Columbia Pictures has also co-produced the film and one wonders what is with ‘foreign’ production houses to get involved in such projects. (They earlier produced Saawariya and Warner got in into the act with Chandni Chowk to China).
For reasons known (to cater to the NRI market) the story is set in Australia, New South Wales to be more precise.  Arjun Rampal plays a fashion photographer who is currently in love with Shreya (Kareena) while his ex-wife (Kajol) is a doting mother who takes care of the three children - the original film had two, but the more children you have on the scene, the more emotions you can wallop. Papa decides to bring his new muse home to introduce her to the kids (and vice versa) but things don’t go according to plan. The kids detest her and even call her a ‘dayan’ (as in witch, if you want to learn Hindi, go to Australia). Trouble brews in the family and it is further compounded when mommy discovers that she has cervical cancer and the Hindi speaking doctor down under reassures her that she will live as long as she can (what was that again??)
Since her end is not too far, she makes arrangements to bring Mommy No 2 back in the house for the sake of her kids. From there on, everybody is either eating, cooking or making breakfast every ten-odd minutes. In between they also go to a pub with kids (looks more like a striptease joint) and they all sing Jailhouse Rock (in Hindi) and you can only hope that good ole Elvis didn’t shift uneasily in his grave on listening to that rendition. The climax pulls at all stops to churn as much emotion as possible and in the end we also get to see wedding which signifies that all is well.
Expectedly, the production values are good and everything the sets look spick and span. Niranjan Iyengar’s dialogues have some regressive lines like “The moment they are born, women have some kind of a genetic code that enables them to become mothers” (as in cook for the children, pick them up from school, etc, etc). The otherwise reliable trio of Shankar Ehsaan Loy is a letdown a far as the music in concerned.
Of the cast, the kids play their part well. Arjun Rampal, like his character, looks like a harangued man and Kareena Kapoor fits the bill. Kajol puts her best foot forward but on the whole, this family is rather dull.