Scandar Copti
Ajami
MY NAME IS KHAN If autism can reboot Claire Danes’ career, can it guarantee Bollywood’s biggest star crossover success? Shah Rukh Khan (known as the “King of Khan”) plays Asperger’s-afflicted Rizwan Khan, a Muslim who leaves Mumbai for San Francisco after his doting mother dies. There he will meet and marry single mom Mandira (Kajol), a Hindu hairstylist. The World Trade Center collapses, an Islamophobic tragedy strikes the Khans, and Rizwan must crisscross the country, by bus and on foot, to deliver a message of tolerance to the president (first Bush II, then Barry) — but not before being incarcerated Gitmo-style and saving a Georgia town from Katrinalike conditions. Khan’s disorder, clearly used to make our hero a pure-hearted naif, comes dangerously close to being exploitative (which may explain the opening-credit disclaimer that flashed for two seconds about attempting to accurately depict Asperger’s). And for a movie that preaches cultural understanding, it sometimes seems a little too comfortable perpetuating ethnic stereotypes. But now the excesses of Karan Johar’s film are being outdone by the real-life drama surrounding My Name Is Khan’s release in Mumbai, where a radical right-wing Hindu party has vowed to disrupt screenings, protesting Khan’s recent remarks that Pakistani players should have been chosen for India’s cricket teams. (Melissa Anderson) (Beverly Center, Fallbrook)
PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS Sounding more like a prog-rock concept album than a kid-lit fantasy franchise, this CGI-congested origin episode — adapted from Rick Riordan’s five-book series — imagines a world in which director Chris Columbus never left the Harry Potter franchise after the first two installments. J.K. Rowling’s empire-building formula clearly comes to mind in the American guise of Percy (pretty boy du jour Logan Lerman), a New York City teen with a bleak home life, who is unaware that heroics and special powers run in his blood. His deadbeat dad is Poseidon! Sorry, wizardry lovers, this is Greek mythology not-so-cleverly contemporized (i.e., Hermes’ winged sandals appear as Chuck Taylors) — though if you squint, Camp Half-Blood could stand in for Hogwarts, hellhound owner Hades would be Voldemort, satyr buddy Grover and Athena’s daughter, Annabeth, are the new Ron and Hermione, and so on. Some of the cameos along the hydra- and minotaur-filled odyssey are unexpectedly amusing (Rosario Dawson plays Persephone as an unsatisfied sexual predator; Uma Thurman slinks more than the snakes in her Medusa coif), but, like Percy himself, the film doesn’t have any traits that qualify as having an actual personality. Even so, as long as the kiddies aren’t too upset by the major liberties reportedly taken with the source material, it might be enough to distract them until Harry returns. (Aaron Hillis) (ArcLight Hollywood)
