Life Mein Kabhie Kabhiee Review

"If you want to be happy, see that you are never unhappy"

This is the message in the climax of LMKK which pretty much summarizes the film's theme. And let us set it clear at the very onset - LMKK is not a campus movie. Campus forms the backdrop only for the first 10 minutes when the 5 fresh-out-of-college protagonists discuss their ideas about complete happiness.

A 5 year journey is taken by four of them [Dino Morea, Sameer Dattani, Nauheed Cyrusi, Anjori Alagh] to find happiness while the fifth [Aftab Shivdasani] takes it up on him to decide the eventual winner.

Director Vikram Bhat has been associated with various genres of film making in the last few years. While his hits RAAZ and AWARA PAAGAL DEEWANA have belonged to horror and action/comedy genre, his best work till date has been in GHULAM that had drama as its foundation.

Easily LMKK is his best work since GHULAM when it comes to drama genre. He made films like FOOTPATH, AITBAAR, ANKAHEE and most recently RED that attempted to explore this genre but it is with LMKK where he gets it perfectly right.

His intention behind making this film is simple....and honest. Hence he doesn't worry much about technique or fall into the trap of Bollywood diktats of an item song, skin show or any unwanted tracks. Instead he focuses completely on the basic subject [original], script [quite strong] and narration [simple, yet making a good impact] that makes viewing LMKK a pleasant surprise.

The movie sticks to its theme and never once does go haywire. It sets the context in the first 20 minutes and lets the characters drive the show from thereon as life takes them all through different twists and turns.

For Dino, happiness lies in being successful. And for that he is willing to have a showdown with his elder brother [Mohnish Behl - quite effective and sincere, as always], a successful entrepreneurs.

For Sameer, happiness lies in getting power. And for that he is willing to join a political party led by Yashpal Sharma [yet another good consistent act], work hard and rise to power.

For Nauheed, happiness lies in being famous. And for that she is willing to join Bollywood as her patient boyfriend supports her throughout rise to fame.

For Anjori, happiness lies in being rich. And for that she is willing to get married to a multi-billionaire even if he happens to be a quintessential playboy.

And for Aftab, happiness lies in just avoiding being unhappy. And for that he is willing to lead a peaceful, fairly uneventful life that leads him to marry a girl of his choice and write a book called LIFE MEIN KABHIE KABHIEE.

LMKK is not about these 5 stories coming one after another or being in parallel. It actually takes a step forward in storytelling and has the 5 of them interacting with each other and crossing paths frequently throughout their 5 years period of exploring happiness.

This journey sees Dino's rise-fall-rise as an entrepreneur, Sameer's rise from being a party worker to the youngest ever MP, Nauheed's rise from being called a sleaze debutant to getting acknowledged as India's No. 1 actress and Anjori's slow and steady walk up the pedestal to get a rich husband only to find herself ignored in a year's time.

But are they all happy? When Aftab tries to find it out, each of them realize that they were not worthy after all to win the bet.

Dino got all the success and carried the guilt of challenging his own brother in the business arena. Sameer got all the power but lost sleep as he carried the burden of being responsible for the death of a rival politician. Nauheed got all the fame but in the process lost her boyfriend [Anuj Sawhney] who realized that