My Name is Khan (2010)
This Bollywood film is directed by Karan Johar and stars Shahrukh Khan and Kajol. A Muslim man with Asperger's syndrome moves from India to the US and has to deal with the changing attitudes of Americans to Muslims in the post 9/11 era.
Before we even really get to the content this film has problems. Either the film is about an hour too long or is two films jammed together. The first 1/3-1/2 of the film is a romantic comedy in the style of Adam (2009) and the second half is more of a Muslim version of Forest Gump (1994) set in the last 10 years. While the first part of the film is well executed it probably should have been vastly shortened given that the meat of the film is all in the second half.
What the majority of the film is about is western misconceptions and fear of Islam in the modern era. While the film does not get overly preachy it does stray into melodramatic territory on occasion. It is interesting to see a different point of view on the topic but it is a real shame there are very few positive western/white/Christian characters in a film and while the message may be that there are only good and bad people, people are not divided by religion I do wonder if the film missed some of it's own message.
3/5 an interesting if flawed film
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