Koi ... mil gaya (2003)

कोई ... मिल गया

One of India's rare science fiction films, Koi ... mil gaya ("I've met ... someone") borrows elements from ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and mixes them with some more typical filmi conventions to create an innocuous and mostly forgettable drama. 

Rohit Mehra (Hrithik Roshan) is developmentally disabled; though a full-grown adult, he has the innocence and the intellect of a not-terribly-bright child.  He has a very sunny disposition, though, and a happy life, well cared for by his mother Sonia (Rekha) and loved by his friends, a group of young boys with whom he attends school.  When a young woman named Nisha (Preity Zinta) arrives in his town and strikes his fancy, Rohit's attempts to impress her raise the ire of the jealous bully Raj (Rajat Bedi).  Raj's taunting and harassment cast a cloud over Rohit's bright days.  One day, though, Rohit discovers and activates the apparatus his deceased father - a maverick scientist - had used to attempt to communicate with other worlds.  Rohit's transmission summons an expedition of aliens, one of whom befriends Rohit.  The alien's otherworldly power transforms Rohit from an awkward naif into a remarkable man of super-human strength and intelligence.  Rohit needs all that and more to put Raj in his place and protect his new alien friend from the destructive curiosity of the Earthly authorities who seek to capture and dissect him.   

Like its more action-oriented sequel Krrish, Koi ... mil gaya has something to say about the abuse of innocence at the hands of the hard, cruel world.  But the sentiment is an easy one, presented without the kind of sophistication that would challenge the audience to any kind of introspection.  There is nothing wrong with that - a film doesn't need to be hard-hitting and provocative to be entertaining.  And Koi ... mil gaya is endearing enough, though some would certainly find it unbearably cloying, and its unbeguiling tone makes it, at base, a film whose greatest appeal will be to children.  It's a fairy tale in which bullies are unrealistically mean, revenge is exacted in improbable ways, and fantasies are fulfilled without cost.

Even though the script doesn't give him much opportunity for nuance, Hrithik Roshan certainly earns high marks for the effort he puts into playing Rohit.  Hrithik's greatest strength as a performer is his outstanding physical skill; he is a superb dancer with masterful control of his body.  Here he uses that control to give Rohit an idiosyncratic physicality that is reminiscent of Dustin Hoffman's performance in Rain Main.  Rohit child-like mind is driven by emotion, and Hrithik translates that emotion into body language, throwing his shoulders back and his chin high in the air when Rohit is happy, slouching with despair when something doesn't go his way, wearing his constant puzzlement at the complex world of grownups.  It would be a treat to see Hrithik Roshan apply all this skill in a subtler vehicle. 

In Koi ... mil gaya, though, the important thing is that the meanies get what's coming to them and the cute little alien gets home, and there's never any doubt that these things will happen.  First, though, the audience must wait patiently through an improbable basketball match (why on Earth would a gang of 20-something bullies think that beating a group of tiny children at basketball was necessary to prove themselves reigning champs of cool?) and a few unnecessarily violent fight scenes.  Eventually, innocence and purity wins out, and justice is done - with a little magical help - with a few sweet and colorful songs along the way, like Haila haila.  You can't ask much more of a simple, derivative fairy tale.

Comments

[yves]

Hi Carla,
"It would be a treat to see Hrithik Roshan apply all this skill in a subtler vehicle", you say: I second that one, for sure!
PS: where had you gone, all that time?
cheers!

[Sally]

Hey Carla,

I disagree with you on this one (and Krrish for that matter). While the script doesnt provide much for any actor to work with, I dont find Hrithek to be a compelling screen presence. His dancing skills are a real highlight although I wished for better songs and music to dance to. My five-year old niece agrees with me -- she is a hindi film fan and mostly enjoys the music and song and dance numbers (her favorite movie is Main Hoon Na). But Koi ... Mil Gaya and Krrish didnt make much of an impression on her either. Am I dismissing Hrithik too quickly? Are there other Hrithik movies that I should check out that might change my mind?

Sally

[carla]

Sally, you made me go back and re-read my own review because I didn't understand why you had the impression I thought Hrithik was some kind of great actor. I don't think I said Hrithik was a "compelling screen presence" and I certainly don't know of any movie in which he showed any sensitivity as an actor beyond his extraordinary ability to control his body. My final comment about his performance, that it would be a treat to see him in a role that had some substance to it, may have been what threw you off. I meant only to say that it would be interesting to see whether, given an interesting role, he would be able to provide an interesting performance using the kind of physicality he demonstrated in KMG - which was really, for me, the only memorable thing about the film.

Put more concisely, KMG shows that he is *trying* - that he put some thought into his performance and didn't just show up and be "charming" the way so many actors do.

[memsaab]

Ugh, I hated this film. Interestingly, it came up in comments on my most recent post too! :-)

I couldn't bear Hrithik's performance and I hated the story, which was just a rip-off of several Spielberg films from the 70's/80's (which I also hated :-) mashed all together. It was cloying, that's the perfect word for it :-)

I do hope that Hrithik improves, he seems very earnest and sincere about his career. And you are completely correct of course about his physical control. He is one of the best dancers I've ever seen!

[Joss]

Good to have you back, Carla.

I recently watched Koi Mil Gaya with my 11 yr old son, and he very much enjoyed it, so we went on to watch Krrish, and Dhoom2 . I think, however, that even an 11 yr old is too sophisticated for KMG. He is prepared to bring a 'willing suspension of disbelief' to his watching of Hindi films, but the deal is that there is fantastic music or action instead of credible plot. KMG had neither of these (unlike the other two Hrithik films we have watched). For myself, I found Hrithik's performance mawkish and overdone. He played a naif in Krrish as well, but with much more interesting character development the more frustrated he became with the confined life his grandmother was making him lead.

Last week my son and I watched Iqbal. Now that really gripped him, from beginning to end. In fact, it aroused a more empathetic response than I have seen in him from any other film we've watched. Like Krrish it is about undeveloped talent and lack of opportunity. And like KMG the main character has some kind of handicap. But what a difference! Obviously Iqbal is a film of another genre, but it could have had songs and dances (along the lines of Swadesh maybe). Think what a treat it would have been then!

Sorry, I've wandered off the subject. I look forward to your next post, Carla.

[carla]

Thanks Joss. :) It's good to be back, now I just have to find the time to write up all the films that are in the pipeline ... I'm still about 5 reviews behind.

I think I struggle, as a reviewer of movies, with approaching them consistently. There are some films that I just don't ask that much from, and give positive reviews to, and others that may be objectively "better" by some measure that just get savaged on my blog. As a matter of philosophy, I am not sure whether that is perfectly fair, just approaching a film on its own terms, or if it's intellectually dishonest.

In the end I think I gave KMG a positive review because I just didn't expect too much from it. I didn't try to watch it in one sitting - I just watched it in chunks here and there when I had some time to spare - and I just enjoyed the cuteness of it and set aside the stupidness of it. I didn't ask anything of it at all.

Compare that to a film like *Devdas* or *Chokher Bali*, films that have received some of the most powerfully negative reviews on this blog. I think there are objective criteria by which both of them are "better films" than KMG. Yet they both struck me as deeply disappointing, egregiously misguided and pretentious wastes of all kinds of potential. I deplore them because they *should* and *could* have been better. Whereas KMG just was what it was; not particularly good, but not disappointing either.