Disclaimer: This article contains minor spoilers that aren’t central to the plot of Ki & Ka in any way, neither are most of the other things happening in the film.
So much has been said and written about Bollywood’s first mainstream gender bender film, that everyone knows the premise of Ki & Ka by now – KAbir (Arjun Kapoor) and KIa (Kareena Kapoor Khan) are an unconventional married couple because Kia works in a hot-shot MNC and Kabir stays at home and runs it. It was supposed to be a slap in the face of traditional gender stereotypes, but nothing of that sort happened, and by the end, I was too bored to care about anything else in the film. As my good deed for the day, here are 12 reasons you should avoid the film.
Making fun of gay people doesn’t make you a feminist.
When they first meet, Kabir tells Kia that he wants to be a housewife like his mother. The next day, he feels the need to call her and explain that this doesn’t mean he’s gay, or likes pink. In fact, he likes whisky and women. Real smooth.
Please spend some time together before getting married.
Kabir and Kia get married soon after they meet, without showing any real signs of love or compatibility. The morning after their wedding, Kia tells Kabir that she doesn’t drink tea, only coffee. This marriage is clearly doomed, so how are we supposed to invest ourselves into the remaining 90 minutes?
The film has some really warped ideas about housewives.
At one point, Kabir says that in the ‘housewife sector,’ there is no insecurity, only happiness. Umm, what? Isn’t this the exact opposite of the point that you’ve been trying to make throughout the film, that no one recognizes the sacrifices a housewife makes for her family?
When Kabir needs to earn some extra cash, he gathers his kitty party girlfriends from the building, and starts giving them fitness lessons, because of course they were all just gaining weight sitting at home doing nothing all the time. What stereotype is being broken here?
A working woman’s house is filthy.
Before Kabir starts living with them, Kia and her mother’s house is filthy. Because independent, working women can’t be bothered with keeping a house presentable? Again, what stereotype is being demolished here? Screaming ‘gender stereotypes are bad’ does not a feminist film make.
Kabir’s obsession with trains is weird.
Kabir is weirdly into trains, so he turns their home into a train museum. That train seems to be going more places than the film at this point.
Token fight sequence.
Just when you feel that Kabir has been emasculated enough by cooking elaborate meals for his family while wearing a mangalsutra around his wrist (not making this shit up), there is a completely unnecessary fight sequence where he saves Kia from roadside Romeos. Cool. Masculinity despite doing housework established.
Stop preaching, start entertaining.
The lectures. Oh, the lectures. The dialogues of this movie are some of the preachiest I’ve ever heard. At some points it starts to feel like this is a seminar on gender equality, and while there’s nothing wrong with them, I’m here to watch a goddamn film. Make shit entertaining!
The fights.
Any time either one of them is put even a little bit on the spot about their marriage, Kabir and Kia have a huge fight. Kinda makes it seem like they didn’t realize what they were getting into in the first place. At one point, bang in the middle of a heated argument, having just been slapped by Kia for insinuating that she’s sleeping her way to the top, Kabir kisses her and they have passionate make-up sex. IN THE MIDDLE OF A FIGHT.
You want to punch the characters in the face.
There’s very little back story that explains why the characters are the way they are. Kia is straight-up unlikable, and Kabir is kind of a doormat. If this is some kind of social commentary, I don’t see the point. If this is unintentional, please write better characters.
Why would Amitabh-Jaya do this?
The Amitabh-Jaya Bachchan cameo in the film is a high point, simply because by then you’re so sick of the existing characters that you need a change. Of course, it soon turns into a disaster when Jaya Bachchan ends up making an extremely problematic, and possibly the most sexist, statement in the film.
Stop saying ‘Ki’ and ‘Ka’, please!
The movie uses the words ‘Ki’ and ‘Ka’ so much, that the dialogue starts to look like an algebraic equation. “Ki ka ka kaam kare ya ka ki ka kaam kare, ki ki hi rahegi aur ka ka hi rahega” – this is super close to a real dialogue from the film. “Khana banaya jaata hai aur naukri ki jaati hai. Hum bol kuch rahe hain aur kar kuch aur rahe hain.” Wait, what? This is not gender equality. What is this? KIsKA murder karoon main?
No idea what happened.
I don’t know what the point of the film is. It’s definitely not the idea that traditional gender roles are useless, because most of Kia and Kabir’s fights are about that. Maybe it’s the fact that money is the biggest cause of marital problems? They should have changed the title then, and everything else about the film, too.
This film is clearly meant to be an April Fool’s joke, hence the release date. The joke’s on the audience, I guess.