Good on its own but not a Mother of all Stories- Kahaani 2
I guess what doesn’t work for Kahaani 2 is the legacy that it has to carry. Kahaani was a first of its kind and a total game changer. And it is very normal for the audience to go with high expectations. Infact, this is the very thing which generally ruins the part-2 for any movie.
Kahaani, when it released, was not only a mother of all stories, but it also gave birth to a series of such movies to follow it. So it was actually the mother of this genre in the current times. Wazir, Teen, Jazba are few examples of movies which were made on similar lines. The “unexpected twist in the end” had become too expected by then that these movies failed to give the jerk which we all felt when watching Kahaani.
Kahaani 2 is good on its own, making its main theme a subject which has till now been touched gently in movies like “Highway” and “Monsoon Wedding”- Sexual Abuse of a Child in Family. It is very much a reality no matter however hard the society tries to justify otherwise. And it is not limited to any particular strata of the society. It happens in the darkest and murkiest of the streets as well as in the well furnished hallways of the so-called elite. It has got nothing to do with financial status, educational qualifications etc. As Vidya Balan puts in the movie that these child molesters are very very normal people like you and me.
Apart from exploring this theme both by means of the child who is going through it right now as well as through Vidya’s character which shows the repurcussions later in life, the movie also treats your eyes to the never before seen locations of Chandan Nagar and Kalimpong. Vidya Balan by now has become one actress who can pull of any role being very comfortable in her skin (literally because it is such a de-glam character). Arjun Rampal’s “Indrajit” is though not Prambrata Chatterjee’s “Satyoki” (ya, I personally loved that one in the first movie), but he does have his moments as he alternate between Vidya’s present and Durga’s past.
As I said before that the thing which most importantly doesn’t work in the favour of the movie is that it is supposed to carry the legacy of the actual mother of all stories. Ya when you name your movie Kahaani 2, expectations are gonna be high and comparisons are bound to occur too. Moreover, this unexpected twist in the end has become too expected today that it no longer gives us any jerks or jitters. The only shock which I got was seeing the cute and chocolate hero of bollywood Jugal Hansraj playing such a despicable character. :-p