Midlife crisis.

Ikke Pe Ikka (1994) is a perfect example of the wild shifts in tone you sometimes see in Bollywood movies. The DVD cover seems to promise an average romantic farce, and the movie delivers. It also delivers a surprisingly effective medical melodrama, though, and tacks on a half-hearted kidnapping subplot just to give Akshay Kumar something to punch.

Kailashnath (Anupam Kher) is a wealthy widower frustrated by his three grown sons, none of whom want to help with the family business. Randhir (Pankaj Dheer) is obsessed with movies and wants to become a famous actor. Rajiv (Akshay Kumar) is only interested in exercise, and wants to open a gym. Rishi (Prithvi) is an aspiring ghazal singer. All three boys are too wrapped up in their own concerns to pay much attention to their father or his concerns.

Meanwhile, Kaushalya (Moushumi Chatterji), the new next door neighbor, has three grown daughters, Komal, Kavita, and Kanchan (Shanti Priya, Chandni and Manjeet Kullar.) Kaushalya is frustrated because her girls aren’t interested in proper behavior and preparing for marriage; instead, Komal loves to exercise, Kavita loves music, and Kanchan loves the movies, so it’s only natural that after a few wacky misunderstandings, the young people pair off.

Kailashnath and Kaushalya hit their respective roofs, each blaming the other for raising such lazy and disrespectful children. After a particularly humiliating evening which featured a side trip to jail, the two parents go off into a side room to settle things once and for all . . . and come out holding hands and giggling like teenagers. It turns out they have a great deal in common.

The children are horrified - it’s not just that their parents are old, and shouldn’t be interested in love and romance, but if Kailashnath and Kaushalya get married that will make them all brother and sister! So the children have to come upo with a clever scheme to thwart their parents’ love. Ha HA! Comedy!

Except (and I am about to spoil the heck out of a fourteen year old movie, so if you plan on seeing Ikke Pe Ikka and really want to be surprised, you should stop reading now) except that Kaushalya and Kailashnath aren’t really in love at all. It’s all a cunning plan to shock their children into proper behavior. What Kaushalya doesn’t know, what nobody knows, is that Kailashnath is dying of blood cancer; he’s desperate to see his sons start on the right path before he goes.

Remarkably, the sudden shift from farce to drama works, largely because the kids stand back and let the grownups handle the heavy acting. And then these guys show up:

The three Kunti brothers (Shiva Rindani and two uncredited others) and one Kunti sister (Sushmita Mukherjee) are the children of Kaushalya’s childhood friend, and for the bulk of the movie are occasional comic relief: they are obsequious, impulsive, overly enthusiastic, and above all, bald, and so exist only to be laughed at. The Kunti sister has a crush on Rajiv, which doesn’t really go anywhere, while her brothers are fixated on Komal, Kavita, and Kanchan. Just when the drama is at its most, um, dramatic, they hire a squad of goons to kidnap the girls so that they can marry them against their will, forcing Rajiv and his brothers to leave their dying father’s side and mount a rescue expedition, culminating in a slapstick fight scene. It’s the kind of thing I would love in another context, but coming right after Anupam Kher staring death in the face and smiling because he knows he has his sons to carry on after him, it seems cheap and tacky. Apparently somebody agreed with me, because after a few minutes the police come, break up the fight, and we’re off to the hospital.
Ikke Pe Ikka is three movies in one, and one of those movies is much better than it has any right to be.