Passing the torch.

 Deewana (1992) isn't a romantic comedy, it's a romantic drama, a grand sweeping tale of love and tragedy starring veteran actor and known sweater enthusiast Rishi Kapoor.  It's also the cinematic debut of a plucky young stage and TV actor named Shah Rukh Khan.  Still, Bollywood's a rough business, and it's very hard for someone without any family connections to make it, so we probably won't be seeing him again.

Kapoor plays Ravi, a wealthy and handsome eligible bachelor.  Ravi is pursuing a music career, so he leaves running the family business to his mother Laxmi (Sushma Seth) and his transparently evil uncle Dhirendra (Amrish Puri).  Dhirendra is all smiles and compliments when people are looking, but he is Laxmi's stepbrother, and he's been nursing a grudge about that for decades.

Ravi shares a little banter with his mother about the importance of getting married and providing the family an heir, then he leaves for a show in a mountain town.  While preparing for the show Ravi stays with aspiring poet and musician Devdas Sabrangi (Deven Verma), and that's where he meets Devdas's niece Kajal (Divya Bharti).  

Kajal is . . . well, she's young and carefree and nothing is ever going to change her.  She's spunky, prone to pouting and telling people "I'll kill you" when thwarted, which is a lot more charming than it sounds.  And she's a huge fan of Ravi, with posters covering her walls.  Ravi and Kajal spend more and more time together, and he keeps extending his trip, but eventually he has to go home.  At first Kajal is heartbroken, but Ravi decides to marry her immediately and take her home with him.

So, Ravi is happy, Kajal is happy, Laxmi is thrilled, and Dhirendra is not happy at all.  He's charming when meeting his new niece-in-law, but the moment he's alone with his son Narendra (Mohnish Bahl) they start scheming.  The first plan involves Narendra assaulting Kajal, but Ravi returns home just in time and Narendra is thrown out of the house, with Dhirenra joining in the rebuke in order to preserve his position.

The second plan is much simpler.  When Ravi and Kajal go away to spend some alone time in the family's farmhouse, Narendra and a small army of goons arrive to kill them both.  There's a fight and Ravi is shot, but he manages to kill Narendra with a sword before falling off a cliff to his apparent death; there's no way that anyone could have survived a fall from that height, so that must be the end of him.

Kajal returns to the family home and tells Laxmi what happened, then Dhirendra arrives and reveals his true colors.  He's furious about the death of his son, and practically destroys the house while pursuing the women, but they escape and, with the help of family lawyer Sharma (Alok Nath) they find a new home in the city.

Life in the city is hard for a pair of widowed women, even if they have money.  Kajal has resigned herself to a life of quiet misery when brash and rebellious rich kid Raja (Shah Rukh Khan) literally runs into them, almost knocking Laxmi over.  Kajal immediately berates him, and he watches her in stunned silence as the police arrive to take him away.  

Raja is smitten, and begins stalking Kajal in earnest, buying her flowers, carving her name into his own arm, following her home on Holi to . . . honestly I'm not sure what he was trying to achieve in that scene, but Kajal was having none of it.  He also tells his stern and materialistic father Ramakant (Dalip Tahil) about the woman he wants to marry.  Ramakant is furious; marrying a widow would be a stain on the family's honor, so he sends thugs to Kajal's home, intending toi drive them away.  Raja arrives just in time and beats the goons up, and while that doesn't impress Kajal, it does impress Laxmi; she urges Kajal to marry the young man in order to secure a protector, and after some heavy guilt tripping Kajal agrees.

After the wedding Raja turns out to be a better man than expected.  He tells Kajal that he knows she still loves her late husband, and promises not to touch her until and unless she feels something for him.  Then he gives her space, focusing instead on providing a comfortable life for his new family, opening a garage with the help of his layabout friends.

After Raja is hurt in a car accident, Kajal realizes that she feels something for him after all, and once again everyone is happy.  And that's when Dhirendra returns to ask Sharma to help him access the family's money.  After Sharma refuses, Dhirendra suspects that the women are alive and well and somewhere in the city, so he sends more goons to find them.  meanwhile, Raja saves a mysterious man from muggers, takes him to the hospital, and checks in on him frequently.  The men quickly become close, but Raja doesn't realize that this mysterious bearded and sweaterless man is actually Ravi.

This is pretty standard late eighties/early nineties Bollywood melodrama, with quick courtships and sudden twists of fate and characters turning out to not be dead after all and noble self sacrifices, though directly confronting the taboos around widows remarrying is a bit unusual.  Ultimately, though, the movie is going to succeed or fail based on the performances.

Rishi Kapoor is always solid, and he's clearly in his element here.  Amrish Puri is also doing what he does best, alternating between chewing the scenery and gently nibbling the doorframes; Dhirendra is a Shakespearean villain as written, so that's how he plays him.  And Divya Bharti is beautiful and charming and stuck in a role which is largely just reacting to one tragedy after another.  All too often, the role of a woman in early nineties Bollywood is to suffer nobly, and Bharti sadly died the next year, just as the industry was starting to open up and let women be fun from time to time.

And then there's Shah Rukh Khan.  He's very stagey in this, playing to the people in the back of the theater, but he also gives Raja some of the same menacing intensity that he would later bring to the villainous roles that would make him a star; Raja even has the same giggle as Rahul does in Darr.  After the wedding he settles down a bit into pleasant leading man, and during the final scenes he throws focus to Bharti and Kapoor, since they have the heavier dramatic beats.  The real difference between this and Khan's later roles is that Raja outright wins every fight he's in, rather than making use of Khan's signature "get beaten to a bloody pulp" move.

Deewana is very much a product of its time, but it's a fascinating time, with Khan at the beginning of his film career while Kapoor was about to transition away from romantic roles, and Bharti's promising career would be cut short by tragedy within a year.  It's a snowglobe of Bollywood history, a singular moment in time.  And a decently entertaining melodrama.