The walls of Jericho are toppling.

 Kitne Door Kitne Paas (2002) is a fairly typical example of the Indian road trip movie: two attractive young people are forced by strange circumstances to travel together, and while they don't get along at first they eventually fall in love.  It sounds a lot like It Happened One Night, but a lot of Bollywood from the turn of the century sounds like It Happened One Night.

Jatin (Fardeen Khan) is young, rich, and living in America, which makes him perfect son-in-law material to a certain type of Indian parent.  Babu Patel (Tiku Talsania) is that type of Indian parent, so he leaps at the chance to set up a match with his daughter Jaya (Sonali Kolkarni.)  Jatin is an incredibly dutiful son, and he's genuinely delighted to be betrothed, even though he hasn't seen so much as a picture of Jaya.

Jatin and his overly attached best friend Jackie (Nasir Khan) are picking up the engagement ring when they bump into Karishma (Amrita Arora).  There's a misunderstanding leading to a terrible first impression, and during the argument Jatin and Karishma both drop their identical cell phones.  It takes a while, but they eventually realize what happens and agree to meet at the airport to switch their phones back, because Jatin is flying back to India to get ,married,and as it happens Karishma is also flying back to India to get married.  They are on the same flight, but Jatin is a decent person so he leaves her alone instead of harassing her for the entire flight like some Bollywood romantic heroes I could mention.

The trouble starts when they reach Delhi.  Jatin's flight to Gujurat has been cancelled,and the train service isn't running, so he needs to get a cab. The only cab driver willing to take him there has another passenger - Karishma.  She's also getting married in Gujurat. In fact, she's getting married in the same village.  Jatin and Karishma may not like each other, but they're both adults, so they can be civil long enough to reach their destination. What's the worst that could happen?

When the group stops for a meal, the cab driver (Satish Shah, in one of many roles he plays in this film) gets into a fight and is arrested. Jatin and Karishma are in a hurry, so they decide to take the cab; naturally,this ends with them getting arrested.  Fortunately Police Inspector Limbachia (Shehzad Khan) assumes that they're newlyweds; Jatin and Karishma try to correct him,but since he's going easy on them because he thinks they're newlyweds they don't try very hard. I'm sure this will have no negative consequences.

 And from there . . . well,it's a road trip movie.  They bounce from one mode of transportation to another, encountering one misadventure after another, and along the way they talk to each other and realize that they are attractive young people with a great deal in common, including dedication to their parents and a positive attitude toward arranged marriage.

Eventually they run into Limbachia again, and instead of just taking them to the village he puts them on a private bus that's been chartered by a family celebrating the anniversary of their grandparents (Rammohan Sharma and Beena Banerjee.)  Thanks to Limbachia the family thinks that Jatin and Karishma are married, and they insist that the young people stay for the party, take part in rituals, and consult with the family priest (Satish Shah again) about their future married life together, which leads to even more rituals.

By this point Karishma and Jatin are obviously in love, but neither one wants to admit it, so they part and rejoin their respective families, secure in the knowledge that they will never see each other again.  But of course it's not that simple - Jaya and Karishma are best friends, the families are close, and as the wedding day approaches (they're getting married on the same day,at the same time, in the same venue) so everybody will be spending a lot of time together.

Naturally there's a great deal of angst as the two young lovers try to pretend not to be in love.  It's not a secret that you can keep forever, but everyone who finds out is pretty understanding - even Karishma's strict traditional father (Govind Namdev) places her happiness above any potential embarrassment.  But Karishma is a very traditional girl, and she won't do anything to risk the family prestige, while Jatin will follow her lead no matter what, so the weddings are on.  It would take a miracle to unite these two, or a daring rescue from a raging fire.  Or actually asking Jaya what she wants.

There are a lot of these road trip movies in Bollywood, and Kitne Door Kitne Paas follows the formula almost exactly, though there's a greater emphasis on the needless self sacrifice.  The fire leads to a genuinely well-crafted and exciting action scene in which absolutely nobody gets punched, and that's a nice surprise, but in the end it's another movie about modern young people sacrificing their love for their traditional family values and getting what they want in the end anyway.

On the other hand, this movie has aged better than many other Indian road trip movies because Jatin doesn't start out as a sexist jerk.  The initial bad impression is the result of a genuine misunderstanding, he doesn't hit on Karishma during the road trip,and he's happy to listen to the women that he meets along the way.  That's rare for a Bollywood hero of the era, and really rare for one played by Fardeen Khan.

On the other other hand, Babu Patel makes a lot of references to American politics of the time, and they haven't aged well at all.  It's a very minor aspect of the movie, though.