KNPH - 20 year review

Happy New Year. 2020 ! Well, who would have known ? Time does fly by , doesn’t it. As Ferris Bueller adviced, life is fast. If you don’t pause once in a while, you could miss it. Or something of that sort.

Now I really did not want to start this new year discussing a movie. But I too, sadly , am running out of time. A tonne of things happening in my life, but no time to really discuss it, contemplate it. Today, while in the gym, all of a sudden, I felt like listening to some old tunes. I have been thinking of my younger days for some time now, ever since this new year. Oddly, I thought of looking up old hindi music, a genre which I totally avoid nowadays. The hindi movie and music industry is garbage these days. And my search for hindi movies landed on Kaho Na Pyaar Hai. Now at the time, I did now know that it came out 20 years ago on 14th January. I found that out later in office. What a coincidence !

On hindsight, it is amazing how positively this movie was received in its hayday. Today, the absolute cheesiness and pothole size plot holes are obvious. But back then, it seems the world’s largest democracy did not care about these things. Back then, they got something they have wanted for long, but never got to vote about. 3 hours of feel good,  movie time, with good sights and good music. Some of the songs still hold up. But the movie itself does not.

Like swiss cheese, the movie is riddled with clichés. The whole double role story, rich girl – poor boy track(second time the guy is rich too), the girls father is a bad guy, so he arranges for the boy to be killed, he serenades her with songs, he has a loyal and shorter sidekick, and a kid brother who is too young, all her friends are ok with him, she has a rich cousin in NZ who is best friends with the rich double role guy, she also has a rich male good friend but never sees a romantic relationship with him, the rich desi in NZ has never been to India, but speaks hindi & urdu without any foreign accent, sings hindi songs, they are so rich that he never has to work, he just rides around on big bikes and cars, he goes to India to find bad guys and all its dangers,and gets shot right at the airport !, finally beats up all the baddies and decides to return with the kid brother, and she finally falls for his looks again.

The End.

If released today, a movie like this would have bombed. Hands and feet down. But this was 20 years ago, so the audience and critics lapped it all up. Me too. The songs in the movie ruled the charts, people got some new dance moves, and all the cheesy dialogues, and the nation got a new actor they began calling the greek god.

It would take Hritik many more years , and countless more movies to properly act in character, and I think that movie was Jodhaa Akbar, when he finally learnt to and spoke bespoke urdu ! I now read that the movie itself won so many awards that it entered some record books. For what, you ask ? For serenading viewers and critics aside.

Those were truly fun times. We are all equally guilty of eating into the chocolate hero movie. In a cheesy movie.

And a part of me is still there.

PS: Sample plot hole: In India, everyone already has cellphones. Mallik and Sirjee converse on cell phones. In NZ, Sonia’s cousin, Neeta, has to get out of her convertible to go to a red phone booth to call home. So she leaves her car on the main road ! It is at this time that Raj comes by without wearing a helmet.