Har Dil Jo Pyaar Karega (2000)

“Every heart that loves.” The title refers to the trials that everyone who loves must endure. They are helpfully enumerated in the title song, but of course the movie is really about the trials that occur when people are stuck in ridiculous situations and are often very stupid about it.

This is one of those movies that, objectively, is not that good. I love it anyway. It’s entirely early-2000s cheese, served up with my favorite actors and catchy music. We begin with the introduction of our hero, Raju (Salman Khan) in a song featuring him in skimpier tops and shorter hemlines than the female backup dancers.

It's glorious.

Raju comes to Mumbai to chase his dream to be a singer. Fate is against him, so he and his friend buy a motorcycle with bad checks and then con Shakti Kapoor for the money to launch Raj’s career. Even dramatic recording sessions can’t help when the music producer suddenly drops dead, and Raj is back to stage one. Feel free to fast-forward through the first 30 minutes, unless you really like Shakti Kapoor and are curious about the adventures of Raj and his sidekick, Indian Luigi.

While bemoaning his bad luck on a lonely Diwali, Raj rescues a woman, Pooja, (Rani Mukherjee) from a car trapped on the train tracks. When he rushes her to the hospital, he’s mistaken for her husband (she’d eloped). It turns out that being Pooja’s husband gets him courted by the music producer that previously scorned him, so when a family friend urges him to keep up the charade for the sake of her father, he agrees. Pooja is in a coma, and can’t object. (Well, she can’t speak or move, but she can hear and see everything. Which sounds like hell, poor woman.) Naturally this leads to a lot of completely unnecessary melodrama, such as the pre-intermission scene where, surrounded by her loving family, he’s expected to put sindoor in Pooja’s hair. Luckily nobody notices the 40 second pause so we can get shots of his turmoil from every angle.

To confuse things even more, he falls for Pooja’s best friend and quasi-sister Jhanvi. (Preity Zinta) This is quite awkward considering Raj is pretending to be Pooja’s husband and only Jhanvi and her father are in on the secret.  

Gotta have an "aur paas" scene

Not to mention that Raj has to worry about what will happen when Pooja wakes up and is able to tell everyone that he is not, in fact, her husband and has been conning everyone all along. So the melodrama just keeps on coming, but, spoilers, everything works out for everyone in the end. Raj even finds someone for Pooja! Sure, they met when he escaped from the mental ward at the hospital and thought comatose Pooja was his dead wife, but, you know, the important thing is that she gets a man in the end.

Awww. . . .

Melodrama aside, there are lots of reasons to love this movie. Pooja and Jhanvi even get their own adorable intro song.

Despite their friendship, I’m not sure this film passes the Bechdel test since “Piya Piya O Piya” is all about finding a man and anyway Pooja spends most of the movie staring vacantly into space as required by the script. But the genuine female friendship is part of the reason I like this sort of movie (see also Mujhse Dosti Keroge, Chori Chori Chupke Chupke, etc), flawed as it is.

Plus, there is an adorable scene in which the three of them dance to "What is Love".

This is one of those movies that sometimes makes less sense with subtitles. Partly because my dvd seems to be missing a few scenes, like when Raj meets Pooja's father in the hospital, and partly because there are plot points and dialogue that went completely over my head when watching it just in Hindi, that turn out to be kinda batshit when translated.

No, it doesn't make any more sense in context.