Hum Aapke Dil Mein Rehte
Hain
Director: Satish Kaushik
Music: Anu Malik, Lyrics: Sameer
Year: 1999
Running Time: 160 minutes
This film changes moods
more often than a runway model changes clothes as it switches back and forth
constantly between comedy, action, tragedy and melodrama. Parts of it feel
quite clunky – especially towards the conclusion when co-incidences hit you
with the speed of a Jackie Chan flurry – but the end result achieves its
purpose of sucking you reluctantly into the story.
Anil Kapoor comes back to visit dad (Anupam Kher) after being away in America
for many years. During these years he has adopted some American traits such
as not really wanting to work too hard or to settle down and raise a family.
His father tries to kill himself on sweets and gets Anil to promise to marry
a woman of the father’s choosing – but Anil stipulates that if after a year
of marriage he is not in love he will exit the marriage.
Where to find a good Indian woman that will accept a one-year contract? It
so happens that dad’s secretary (Kajol) is in dire need to stabilize her
finances with an unmarried pregnant sister, a sister with a heart condition
that the husband has thrown out and a brother who can’t find a job. So she
takes up this burden in hopes that within a year her husband will come to
love her. With Kajol what are the chances that he wouldn’t? You would have
to be made of steel to resist her impish charm and warm chapattis. Anil it
turns out though isn’t so much steel as mush and even when she brings him
back from death’s door – praying till her knees bleed – he doesn’t seem more
than a touch grateful. He finally realizes too late what all of us knew –
and now has to win back an embittered Kajol. It nearly spins out of control
in the melodrama that follows and the need to stretch the film to nearly
three hours – with an ending that is so absurd that one can only shake your
head and go with it.
Kajol is wonderful and is given full rein to display her emotions here and
has a couple rip out your heart scenes, while Anil is appropriately mellow
like a south California surfer dude until he realizes how much he loves Kajol
and then gets all misty-eyed. The main drawback of the film is an ongoing
vaudeville routine between three other characters (Johnny Lever and Satish
Kaushik being two of them) that was initially mildly amusing but becomes
painful as they keep banging on the same nail. Appearing also is a sultry
Mink Singh and Shakti Kapoor as her uncle.
The music fills out the film nicely, but is nothing that stays in your mind.
A couple of the numbers are catchy – Meri Life and Dil Mein – and the choreography
is competent if not all that imaginative as they jump from Europe to the
Himalayas to a Caribbean resort for some reason.
My rating for this film: 7.0