*Heavy sigh.*

Jaan-E-Mann: Let's Fall in Love . . . Again (2006) is every bit as subtle as the subtitle implies.  It's a deliberate throwback to the romantic comedies of the mid-Nineties, with gratuitous special effects, choreography by Farah Khan, and an excellent cast (including Preity Zinta, the human Incarnation of Adorableness), and these are all things which I love, so this movie should make me fall in love . . .  again.  And yet, I have not fallen in love . . . again.

Salman Khan plays Suhaan Kapoor, a struggling actor, and the reason he's struggling is that he absolutely refuses to take any role that isn't the lead, and is also kind of a low-key jerk most of the time.  He does have at least one friend, though - his uncle, Boney Kapoor (Anupam Kher), who is . . . . sigh.  Boney is supposed to be a little person, and since Kher is not a little person, they create the illusion by having Kher walk around on his knees.  It is exactly as embarrassing as it sounds.

Suhaan used to be married to Piya (Preity Zinta), but as a convenient song/flashback helpfully explains, when he got his big break, the director was horrified to discover that he had cast a married actor and threatened to fire Suhaan unless he agreed to stay away from his wife until the film's release.  The film finally came out and was a massive flop, and when Suhaan Finally returned home, Piya was gone.  He tried for months to contact her, but in the end the only reply he received was divorce papers.

Suhaan owes Piya a great deal of alimony, and he has no money to pay it (since again, struggling actor who refuses to take any role which is not the lead despite the fact that his one starring role was a box office disaster) but just when things are looking bleak, Agastya Rao (Akshay Kumar) arrives.  Agastya was desperately in love with Piya in college, but she never really noticed him.  Still Agastya, who is now an astronaut, which is important to the framing story and the genuinely terrible final twist but doesn't really play into the main plot of the movie at all, has traveled all the way to India to see her again, only to find Suhaan, instead.  Agastya doesn't realize that Suhaan is the ex-husband, and this gives Boney an idea: if Agastya marries Piya, then Suhaan won't owe her any alimony anymore.

Agastya flies to New York to find Piya, and Suhaan accompanies him as his wingman; it's like Cyrano de Bergerac if Cyrano were a creepy, manipulative jerk.  They rent the apartment directly across from Piya, and set up a powerful telescope to spy on her 24-7, and the movie never, ever calls them out on this outrageous invasion of privacy.  A friendly cafe owner who is also played by Anupam Kher gives them a pair of walkie-talkie earpieces, and thus equipped Agastya makes contact, while Suhaan lurks nearby in a variety of stupid disguises.

First surprise - Piya remembers Agastya.  In fact, she remembers him fondly, and knows that he was in love with someone at college, and left when his heart was broken. Agastya uses Suhaan's knowledge of Piya to insert himself into her life.  So far she clearly thinks of him as a friend, but things are going well, so well that Suhaan is having doubts.

(I will give the movie credit for this: Piya in person is a different, kinder, and more empathetic person than Piya in the flashbacks.  It's clear that both Suhaan and Agastya are remembering her in the context of their own romantic disappointments, rather than as an actual person with agency who is free to love or not love anybody she chooses.  And now I am done giving the movie credit for things.) 

Suhaan's doubts increase thanks to the second surprise - Piya has a daughter.  His daughter.  Suddenly all bets are off.  Suhaan wants his wife and child back, so he goes off to get a job in order to be worthy of them.  Unfortunately, while he is doing this, Agastya and Piya visit her family, Agastya accidentally proposes, and her family pressures her into accepting.  Suhaan nobly sacrifices his love and leaves, which means it's up to Agastya to realize the true situation and arrange things so that husband and wife can finally fall in love . . . again.

I'll be honest.  I watched this movie because I have missed Preity Zinta, and she is genuinely delightful here, displaying her usual mix of bubbly charm and dramatic pathos.  She is not enough to save the movie, though; it's a jumbled mess that can't decide whether to be a David Dhawan style broad comic farce or a Karan Johar style tearjerker, so it tries to be both and fails utterly.

And then there's that final twist.  Normally I try not to spoil this kind of thing, but this movie is bad and I do not want you to watch it, so here it is.  Turn back if you don't want to know.

In the framing story, Agastya is on  a space station (astronaut, remember?), telling his blonde fellow astronaut about his friend Suhaan.  We do not see blonde astronaut's face.  At one point in the main story, Agastya tells Suhaan that it is a scientific fact that everybody in the world has six other people with the same face, and sure enough, at the end we finally see blonde astronaut's face, and yes, she's played by Preity Zinta.  And for some reason she's thrilled to discover that she's the Madelyne Pryor to Piya's Jean Grey, a second choice who only gets her man because she looks just like her man's lost love, and I roll my eyes so hard that they're still sore.