Saturday, August 25, 2018

Who Am I to You...!

Hum Aapke Hain Koun...!; drama / comedy / musical / romance, India, 1994; D: Sooraj Barjatya, S: Salman Khan, Madhuri Dixit, Mohnish Bahl, Renuka Shahane, Anupam Kher, Reema Lagoo




Rajesh is a successful businessman, just like his uncle Kailashnath. Rajesh's brother is the mischievous Prem, who is still studying. They both had to learn to be independent since they lost both parents. Rajesh gets engaged to Pooja, the daughter of Siddharth Choudhury. Simultaneously, Prem falls in love with Nisha, Pooja's sister, but they keep this a secret. With time, Pooja gives birth to a baby. However, Pooja slips down the stairs and dies from the fall in the hospital. Devastated, the now-widowed Rajesh is a broken man. The family thus decides to engage him to the girl "next in line", Pooja's sister Nisha. Due to a misunderstanding, Nisha accepts the arranged marriage, and decides to send a farewell letter to Prem via her dog, Tuffy. The dog, though, gives the letter to Rajesh, who decides that Prem and Nisha should marry instead, since they love each other.

When it comes to India's highest grossing films, an unofficial trio marked the 90s: "Who Am I to You...!", "The Big-Hearted Will Take Away the Bride" and "Something is Happening". These three films signalled a rejuvenation of India's cinema, since the local audiences rushed to the cinemas and showed that there is an interest in these films, after all, which helped overturn the meagre box office results from the 80s into positive numbers. However, while the latter two films are justifiably still remembered fondly, since they have a lot of charm, wit and genuine ideas, the former, "Who Am I to You...!" feels rather dated by today's standards: it starts off fun, but quickly loses its inspiration and falls into the standard mold of a soap opera. The sequence where Pooja slips and the camera lingers on how she is falling down the stairs, which will prove to be fatal, is a typical cliche of melodramatic soap. Likewise, the 3-hour running time is a detriment for such a thin storyline, since almost a third of its time is filled with tiresome musical and dance sequences, until the movie collapses under this weight. The only reason to see it are the two sympathetic leading roles, Salman Khan and Madhuri Dixit, and the cute white dog, Tuffy, yet these are only small crumbs of pleasure in an movie that has too much empty walk. One of the best moments is the comical sequence where Prem and Lalloo are suppose to bring shoes in a box for the wedding, yet the mischievous Nisha tricks them and steals the box away (which was guarded by Tuffy): when Prem and Lalloo find the box, they discover that the shoes are missing and the box is instead filled with candy. However, Prem manages to bring the shoes back and return the empty box to Nisha with an amusing note that while she is "sweet as candy", they need the shoes. The movie would have benefited if there were more of these kind of fresh moments in the story, yet director Sooraj Barjatya insisted on a kitschy, albeit solid fluff.

Grade:+

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