Archie Month: Mujshe Dosti Karoge!

Mujshe Dosti Karoge! (2002)  is another movie that follows the Archie formula, a love story about the girl next door, her glamorous friend, and a lovable doofus who neither one can resist..  Or at least it starts out that way, but this love triangle is decidedly lopsided.

The movie opens in the past, in Shimla.  Childhood friends Raj, Pooja, and Tina (Athit Naik, Nandina Seth, and Barkha Singh) form a sort of puppy love triangle: Raj has a crush on Tina, Pooja pines for Raj, and Tina mostly enjoys the attention.  But everything changes when Raj's father (Kiran Kumar) decides to relocate to London in order to get ahead of the dot.com boom.  Raj asks Tina to email him, and she agrees, though since her family doesn't have a computer, she'll do it from Pooja's house.  

After arriving in London Raj sends Tina a long message about his new life. She gets bored and wanders off halfway through, but Pooja finishes the message and writes back, signing Tina's name in order to fulfill her friend's promise.  They keep writing back and forth for fifteen years, sharing hopes and dreams and a mysterious tune that popped into Raj's head when he visited a church, but Pooja never manages to tell Raj that she's Pooja, not Tina.  At the end of fifteen years, Raj announces that he's returning home to Shimla, and they can see each other in person.  Raj (now played by Hrithik Roshan) and "Tina" decide not to exchange pictures because they believe they'll recognize each other right away.

Ever pragmatic, Pooja (Rani Mukherji) tells Tina (Kareena Kapoor) about the forged emails, though first she has to remind Tina of who Raj is.  Tina agrees to keep up the deception, and it's just as well, because at the train station Raj recognizes Tina immediately, walking straight past Pooja in order to talk to her.  He notices Pooja eventually, though, and the three friends settle in to the old dynamic, with Raj pursuing Tina and Pooja following along after, though this time Tina starts to fall for Raj as well.

The romance progresses, though occasionally Raj wonders why Tina is so different from her emails, and Pooja gently explains that meeting someone in person can be different from interacting with them online.  By the end of Raj's trip, he and Tina are nearly engaged, while he and Pooja have become close friends; Pooja promises that she'll always be there for him, he just has to close his eyes and think about her.

Back in London, back at work, Raj finds himself talking more about Pooja than Tina.  He closes his eyes and thinks about her, and there she is!  Tina is applying to a college in London, and dropped by Raj's office to say hello.  He shows her around London, and while visiting an old church, Pooja absentmindedly hums the tune he sent her all those years ago.  Raj finally realizes that Pooja wrote the letters and so it's Pooja that he loves.  She tries her best to sacrifice her love for Tina's sake, but after a romantic song they decide to return to India and tell everyone that they're getting married.

They arrive in India just in time for the funeral for Tina's father, who has died suddenly.  Tina is now officially an orphan and all alone in the world, but fortunately she's just about to marry Raj, and he'll take care of her, right?  Pooja's parents have stepped in to act as Tina's family and perform all the necessary arrangements.

Raj wants to tell the truth anyway, but Pooja stops him; she's determined to protect Tina at all costs, so she asks Raj to go through with the marriage for her sake.  Raj agrees, but with a condition: he shouldn't have to make the sacrifice alone, so he will only marry Tina if Pooja marries someone else on the same day.  Enter Rohan (Uday Chopra), Raj's old friend.  He's interested in Pooja, and she seems to tolerate him, which sounds like a great basis for a marriage.

My major complaint about Kuch Kuch Hota Hai is that Rahul and Anjali are entirely passive, depending on fate to get them out of their romantic predicament.  That's not the case here.  Instead, Raj and Pooja actively sabotage themselves at every opportunity, turning an awkward situation into a tangled mess that can only be resolved by divine intervention.

The Archie roots are clearly visible here, since the central triangle are all friends, and the movie spends a lot of time talking about the importance of that friendship.  However, unlike the other Archie-inspired movies we've covered, the narrative insists that there is a clear wrong answer.  Tina is not a bad person, but she is very much an early Kareena Kapoor character.  Despite the heart of gold, she's deeply spoiled, self-centered, over-dramatic, loud, and prone to sudden fits of anger.  And she has basically nothing in common with Raj apart from being friends with Pooja.

 Which is nonsense, of course.  Tina can be kind of annoying, but annoying people deserve love too.  And Pooja is the only one of the three leads willing to tell the truth about what she wants, which is pretty basic to a successful relationship.  She's also willing to confess about the letter sin public.  Pooja, on the other hand, lied to Raj for over a decade and is so sure that she knows what everyone else needs that she'll sacrifice everything without ever asking them if that's what they want.

The thrust of the narrative is that Raj and Pooja belong together, and they fight against their destined happy ending like heroes from Greek tragedy desperately fighting against fate.  It probably seemed like a good idea at the time.