I was kind of expecting the Spanish Inquisition.

Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla got their big break  in Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, so the producers of Daulat Ki Jung (1992) don't waste much time in establishing the premise of the movie; they assume the audience is already familiar with Khan and Chawla as star-crossed lovers kept apart by their feuding families.  The two houses both alike in dignity are headed by Bhushan Chaudhry (Shafi Inamdar) and Mr. Agarwal (Tiku Talsania.)  The feuding fathers are rival builders, both attempting to conclude a shady real estate deal with Haribhai (Paresh Rawal.)

Their children, Rajesh (Khan) and Asha (Chawla) attend the same college, and they are secretly already in love.  Everything is fine until the young lovers are cast as young lovers in the school play, and Asha's father Agarwal happens to attend the performance.  He is instantly (and correctly) convinced that the pair are really in love, so he hires a goon named Zorro to keep the pair apart.  Zorro fails, because he's an idiot who can't help playing with his suspenders whenever he's on screen.

The next step is to lock Asha in her room, which prompts Rajesh to rescue her.  The two drive off in search of the nearest temple so they can get married, and that is where the plot starts to go off the rails.  They run into a wounded man on a motorcycle (literally), and while taking him to the hospital are surrounded by a motorcycle gang led by Rana (Kiran Kumar.)  The bikers are in search of a treasure map, and since the wounded man has conveniently died,  they are convinced that the young lovers have it.  Asha finds the map, and Rajesh memorizes it (it's established early in the film that he has an eidetic memory) and eats it, forcing the bikers to keep the pair alive if they want to find the treasure.

And the plot goes a little further off the rails when it turns out that there are two criminal gangs, also both alike in dignity, looking for the treasure.  The other gang is led by Mike (Dalip Tahil), and the two gangs are about to start killing each other when they are interrupted by K.K. (Kader Khan), an eccentric assassin who sleeps in a coffin pulled by a donkey.  K.K. invites himself along on the treasure hunt, and by the time the little group stumbles across a tribal village filled with ridiculous stereotypes, the plot has left the tracks behind and is running screaming into the sunset.

I'm not sure what to make of Daulat Ki Jung.  It's definitely a movie, in which events occur and dialogue is spoken.  The early part of the movie is rather charming; Rajesh and Asha are surprisingly level-headed for star-crossed lovers, and the school play makes some amusing references to Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak.  At its best, the rest of the movie is pleasantly unhinged, with Kader Khan in particular infusing a great deal of charisma into a very silly role.  But the tribal stuff is just embarrassing, with ooga booga gibberish dialogue and the threat of human sacrifice, which is thwarted by a combination of Asha dancing and the men exploiting primitive superstition.  I've seen more nuanced portrayals of tribal life in old Tarzan movies.

Tribal nonsense aside, the things that happen are at least interesting, but by the end I was greeting each new plot twist with a hearty "Sure.  Why not."  Still, in the end, this is absolutely a movie that I have seen.