Indian Proposal

 The apparent moral of Judaai (1997) is “If someone offers to buy your spouse for twenty million rupees, say no.” I’m enough of a crazy optimist to believe that most people already know that. If they don’t, I doubt even Sridevi can convince them. No, the real moral of Judaai is “Before marriage, it’s best to do a little research.”

The film opens with the wedding of Raj (Anil Kapoor) and Kaajal (Sridevi). Kaajal’s father (Kader Khan) is thrilled with the match; Raj in an engineer, and should make good money, with plenty of extra income from bribes. He’s a little taken aback when he sees Raj refusing a very expensive wedding gift from a contractor because he does not intend to do business with the man, and Kaajal herself is disappointed when she arrives at her new marital home only to discover that there is no air conditioning, and not even a refrigerator.

Poor but honest is still honest, though, and Kaajal and Raj (and eventually their two children) settle into a reasonably happy life. Kaajal still longs for more material things, but it’s a Lucy Ricardo or Hyacinth Bucket sort of longing; she’s a bit pretentious, and sometimes she spends too much money or lies to the neighbors, but she loves Raj and he loves her and in the end they always make up.

Meanwhile, Kaajal’s Bollywood-obsessed brother Harilal (Johny Lever) provides another example of “look before you buy.” He hears a mysterious voice singing, and assumes that the singer is Vani (Upasna Singh), daughter of Raj and Kaajal’s landlord Hasmukhlal (Paresh Rawal). Hari has seen Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, so he assumes the role of the heroic suitor trying to win over his beloved’s stern father. While he’s no Amrish Puri, Hasmukhlal is in fact sort of intimidating; he dominates every conversation with a never ending stream of questions, and even has a question mark on his forehead like a low-rent Indian version of the Riddler. Hari brings home the bride, but it isn’t until the wedding night that he realizes that Vani has a severe case of Bollywood Mystery Disease, and the only thing she’s able to say is “Abba dabba jabbha.” (The entire subplot basically goes nowhere, but it’s worth mentioning because while the basic premise is stupid, Johny Lever is actually really funny in this movie.)

Raj works for Mr. Sinha (Saeed Jaffry). Sinha has a niece, Janhvi (Urmila Matondkar) returning from America. Since all of his drivers are out on other jobs, he sends Raj to the airport to collect her, and the pair immediately start arguing. Janhvi is intrigued, however, and soon decides that Raj is the man for her. Finding that he’s married really doesn’t deter her. As she sees it, Raj would hardly be the first man in India to take a second wife.

(A slight digression - Janhvi is terribly impressed upon seeing Raj refuse a lucrative job offer because, unlike the prospective employer, Sinha gave him a chance when he was just starting out, and he refuses to betray him. This is portrayed as a wonderful demonstration of loyalty, but it strikes me as arrogance more than anything. Raj has a family, money is definitely tight (they’re saving up to buy a small cassette player) and financial issues are a constant source of strain in his marriage. While ethics are important, there’s nothing wrong with finding a better job for the sake of your family, or at least asking your obviously very rich employer for a raise. Working exactly the job you want without caring about the money is a luxury best reserved for the single.)

Raj has no interest whatsoever in marrying another woman; despite the occasional arguments, he loves Kaajal. Janhvi refuses to give up, and so she approaches Kaajal at the temple and makes an indecent proposal. Kaajal will receive twenty million rupees if she convinces her husband to take Janhvi on as a co-wife. Kaajal is shocked and horrified, but then she keeps thinking about all she could do with the money. She had always wanted to put the children into a good, English, school, and they could move to a better house, buy a nice car instead of taking the bus everywhere . . . Her father thinks it’s a great idea, while her mother (Farida Jalal) tries to explain how insane the very notion is.

Kaajal makes her decision. When Raj refuses to even consider the idea, she goes on a hunger strike until he agrees. Finally he breaks down, she and Raj get a divorce, he is married to Janhvi, and they all teleport to Las Vegas for some very bad dancing before moving in together. What could possibly go wrong?

While he’s agreed to the marriage, Raj is sullen and wants nothing to do with Janhvi. Kaajal is so consumed by her new life as a wealthy woman that she has no time for anything else, though, while Janhvi transforms herself into the perfect submissive Indian wife. She wins over the children with what may well be the lamest joke ever written, and patiently sets out to woo Raj. He’s reluctant, but he finds himself more and more drawn to the woman who’s actually paying attention to him. Kaajal and Raj keep drifting farther apart, Janhvi and Raj keep drifting closer together, and then, finally, Kaajal realizes what she’s given up and decides she wants it back.

Judaai has a great cast. It is always nice to see Farida Jalal in action, and Johny Lever was (as previously mentioned) genuinely funny. Sridevi, meanwhile, is fantastic. The early portions of the film showcase her comic talents (when Janhvi approaches her at the temple, she hides behind a pillar with a strange little hop that was so funny I had to rewind and watch it again) and in the second half of the film she displays considerable dramatic depth.

On the other hand, the message of the film is a bit muddled. The idea is that Kaajal has done wrong and needs to purify herself through suffering. The characters in the film go to great lengths to point out that yes, Kaajal did ruin her own life, but it’s not until the very end of the movie that someone points out the simple fact that there were other people involved. The whole thing was Janhvi’s idea, after all, and if Raj had been more concerned about the welfare of his family than with his personal code of honor, the whole mess could have been avoided. Most importantly, Raj and Kaajal could have saved themselves a lot of grief by sitting down and talking for half an hour before marriage.

Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna

Writer/director Karan Johar is either becoming more of a cynic or more of a romantic, and I’m really not sure which. Either way, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006) continues Johar’s examination of the boundaries of love. In Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, the boundaries are self imposed; Rahul is a widower who believes one can only love (and marry) once, while Anjali is engaged to someone else. In Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, the lovers have to cross boundaries of class and religion, and face familial opposition. In Kal Ho Naa Ho, Naina loves one man, and is forced by circumstances to marry another. KANK continues the theme of transgressive love by presenting star crossed lovers who are married to other people. In a Hollywood movie, this would be no big deal, but within the moral universe of Bollywood, it’s a daring move.

For rising soccer star Dev Saran (Shahrukh Khan), love is certainly not friendship. (This movie takes place in New York City, in that strange alternate dimension where Oxford University is in London, men’s soccer is a major US sport, and everybody is played by Shahrukh Khan.) He’s married to Rhea (Priety Zinta), an old friend from college, and the cracks in the relationship are already beginning to show; both are growing increasingly focused on their respective careers. Still, when he meets Maya (Rani Mukherjee), a reluctant bride wondering whether to go through with her own marriage to childhood friend Rishi (Abhishek Bachchan), he advises her to go ahead with it. He tells her that while she doesn’t really love Rishi, it’s better to marry now then wait for a love that she may not find, and that love won’t find her after marriage unless she goes looking for it. She’s convinced and goes inside to get married, while Dev is promptly hit by a car.

Four years later, Dev is a children’s soccer coach with a bad leg and a worse attitude. He’s the kind of coach who motivates his charges by shouting at them. He’s particularly nasty to his son Arjun (who plays soccer badly and really only wants to play the violin) but Dev is thoroughly unpleasant to everyone he meets. Rhea now runs a fashion magazine called Diva, and while she’s able to provide a very comfortable life for Dev, Arjun, and Dev’s mother Kamaljit (Kiron Kher), the disparity in incomes adds another layer of conflict to an already strained marriage.

The relationship between Maya and Rishi is also strained. He’s a bit of a slob, while she’s a neat freak bordering on obsessive compulsive disorder. More seriously, she doesn’t like him to touch her; naturally, Rishi is a bit frustrated.

Dev and Maya meet again by chance. I won’t get into details; the entire “Black Beast” subplot is goofy, and not in a good way. What’s important is that they meet, and make a bad impression. They cross paths again at a party Rishi’s publicity company is throwing for his father Sam (Amitabh Bachchan), and this time they realize that if nothing else, they share a dislike of big musical numbers. Fate keeps throwing them together, and they finally decide that they may as well become friends.

Thew evolving relationship between the two is handled very well. They really have a lot in common. (Maya is just as serious about keeping the world at arms length as Dev is, she’s just more polite about it.) Initially, the pair give each other advice with their respective marriages. None of their plans work out, and after a particularly unfortunate evening the pair meet up at a train station, and finally realize that they love each other. It’s a nice scene, featuring the most romantic line in the film: “I like blue.”

Dev and Maya drift into an emotional affair. Rhea and Rishi, meanwhile, rededicate themselves to making their marriages work. Unlike Dev and Maya their plans involve communicating with their spouses, so they meet with considerably more success. Both marriages suddenly have a fighting chance, but Dev and Maya start getting jealous, and so it is then and only then that they decide to sleep together. 

I like Karan Johar.He’s a very good writer, and has a fantastic ear for dialogue. KANK is no exception; the dialogue positively sparkles at times. (”I like blue,” indeed.) Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna is an interesting examination of his usual films; I was particularly struck by the fact that in all his movies, the lovers need an outside push before they can be united. Production values are high. The cast does quite well with some very heavy material. Dev, in particular, is a far cry from Shahrukh’s usual persona.

The problem is that I like Shahrukh’s usual persona. I don’t like Dev. Most of the main characters in this movie are varying degrees of unpleasant; Kamaljit is a virtuous Bollywood mother, and while Sam is a bit of a lad he gives good advice and his heart is clearly in the right place, but the rest? I often end reviews by essentially saying, “This is a terrible movie, but I enjoyed it.” Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna is the flipside of this; it’s a very good movie, probably, but I didn’t like it.

Live and let Don.

I can't really talk about Don 2 (2011) without spoiling the events of Don; even the title is sort of a spoiler.  So let's get the spoilers out of the way now.  In the last movie, Don (Shah Rukh Khan), the gangster who is too cool to bother with having a name, dies in police custody, but DCP De Silva (Boman Irani) recruits Vijay (also Khan), a kindly and sort of goofy street performer, to infiltrate Don's gang and discover the identity of Don's superiors, especially the mysterious Vardhaan.  When De Silva is killed, Vijay is left without support, and he teams up with fellow revenge-seeker-in-disguise Roma (Priyanka Chopra) to unmask Vardhaan, who was really De Silva all along and is not dead.

But De Silva is not the only character with a secret.  Vijay is really dead, and we've actually been following Don pretending to be Vijay pretending to be Don in order to infiltrate his own gang, which gives him the chance to rule the Tri-State Area!take over the Asian drug trade.  Don stays just long enough to flirttaunt with Roma one last time, and then he makes his escape.

 

Five years (and one movie) later, Don has mostly consolidated his control over the Asian drug trade, and more importantly, he has stopped wearing his ties on the inside of his shirt.  Don wants to move into the European market; the European market does not want Don to move in, so they arrange for an ambush.  Don shoots absolutely everybody and makes his escape again.

Meanwhile, Roma has gone to work for Interpol.  (That's movie Interpol, the one with the armed agents and law enforcement powers, not real Interpol.)  Her superior, Malik (Om Puri, also reprising his role from the first movie) has announced his retirement, and Roma is just trying to talk him out of it when they are interrupted by . . . Don?

Don wants to make a deal.  He offers to give up his entire syndicate and basically every criminal he's ever met, in exchange for every country in the world dropping all charges against him.  It's an intriguing offer, and there's no chance of anyone taking him up on it.  

 

Instead, Don is sent to prison.  The same prison which holds Vardhaan.  And that's just what Don wanted; he's there to break Vardhaan out of prison, because he needs his help to break into the Deutsche Zentral Bank in Berlin, because this was secretly a heist film all along!  Don and Vardhaan, along with Don's girl Friday Ayesha (Lara Dutta) and starstruck but basically good guy hacker Sameer (Kunal Kapoor) plan to steal the printing plates form the bank.  Roma and Malik are in hot pursuit, but she's mainly in Germany to give Don somebody to flirttaunt with. 

Don 2 is a movie that knows exactly what it is.  It's pure style over substance, but we are talking about an awful lot of style here.  There are cool spy gadgets (at one point Don uses a Mission Impossible-style mask to disguise himself as Hrithik Roshan), crazy car chases, visceral fight scenes, and slick song numbers, but the movie's greatest source of style is one Shah Rukh Khan.

 

And this is where Vijay being dead helps the movie, because you don't have the Good Shah Rukh character to root for.  There is only Don.  And Don isn't the villain protagonist because he's a better person than the people he's fighting.  Don is an awful person, but he's the villain protagonist because he's played by Shah Rukh Freaking Khan, making full use of his reserves of preternatural charisma.  He's like James Bond, but evil.  (Well, more evil.)

 

And like Bond, Don is still vulnerable, even without a sympathetic backstory.  At heart Don is an arrested adolescent, an eternal thirteen year old with access to money and guns and fast cars and beautiful women.  And that's why you cast Shah Rukh Khan for this sort of thing; mixing cool and goofy is what Shah Rukh does.  He gives the character of Don an extra dimension.  Granted, that's still only two dimensions, but it's one more dimension than I was expecting.

Changing a hawk to a little white dove.

You might think that Action Replayy (2010), in which a young man travels back to 1975 in order to save his parents' relationship, is the Bollywood remake of Back to the Future, but director Viprul Ameutlal Shah insists that it's actually adapted from H. G. Wells's conveniently public domain The Time Machine, and has nothing whatsoever to do with any Hollywood film franchises involving time-traveling DeLoreans and Michael J. Fox kissing his mom.  If that's true, then I am deeply disappointed by the lack of Morlocks.

 

Bunty (Aditya Roy Kapoor) loves Tanya (Sudeepa Singh.)  Tanya loves Bunty.  She's ready to get married, but Bunty won't even think of it, because his own parents, Kishen and Mala (Akshay Kumar and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, both in terrible old age makeup), have a dysfunctional nightmare of a marriage.  Everything comes to a head at Kishen and Mala's thirty fifth wedding anniversary party, when Mala's old friend (and Kishen's old bully) Kundanlal (Rannvijay Singh) crashes the party and casually humiliates Kishen, while all the assembled guests (and Mala) laugh.  Once the guests leave, the unhappy couple start talking about divorce.  Then they start shouting about divorce.

 

Tanya was raised by her grandfather, Anthony Gonsalves (Randhir Kapoor), who happens to be an eccentric scientist and therefore has an experimental time machine in his basement.  (And to the director's credit, the time machine looks very much Wells's time machine is normally depicted, and nothing at all like a DeLorean.) Bunty "borrows" the time machine and heads back to 1975, determined to make his parents fall in love with each other.

 

There are obstacles.  Obstacle number one: 1975 Kishen is . . . a nerd.  Obstacle number two: 1975 Mala is a mean tomboy, and every bit as much of a bully as Kundanlal.  Obstacle number three: oh yea, Kundanlal.  He's around and a huge jerk.  And obstacle number - well, the other main problem is that Mala's mother (Kirron Kher) and Kishen's father (Om Puri) hate each other, so they will be no help.

Still, Bunty tries his best to nudge his parents toward one another, and it ends in humiliating failure.  The good news is that both his parents are prompted to (separately) tell Bunty their tragic backstories, giving him genuine insight into what they've suffered and how they became the people they are, which will help him to manipulate them in the future.  The bad news is that along the way Bunty accidentally made Kundanlal fall in love with Mala, so Kishan now has a rival, and suddenly it's looking likely that Kishen and Mala won't get married at all.  Meanwhile, Mala's sassy galpal Mona (Neha Dhupia) has fallen in love with Bunty.  (The power of love is a curious thing.)

 

Take two.  Bunty gives Kishen a long-overdue makeover (Montage?  Montage.) and teaches him to act cool.  Then, once Mala is paying attention, Bunty orders Kishen to act aloof and ignore her, so that she will fall in love out of jealousy.  It's skeezy and manipulative, though to be fair it's still less creepy than some of the stuff Marty McFly comes up with.

 

I love blatant Bollywood ripoffs of Hollywood movies, because I'm always fascinated by what changes during the adaptation process.  Action Replayy is no exception.  The emotional core of the Back to the Future movies is Marty's friendship with Doc Brown, but Bunty and Gonsalves barely know one another.  Yeah, 1975 Gonsalves fixes the time machine, enabling Bunty to get back to the future, but he does so almost entirely offscreen.  Instead, the focus is on Bunty getting to know his parents and learning to appreciate them as people, and teaching them to appreciate each other as people in the process.  (Granted, he does that by toying with their emotions, but nobody's perfect.)

 

Despite the director's protests, the inspiration for Action Replayy is blindingly obvious, but the end result is still very different.

Breathing space.

I like a bombastic action movie as much as the next guy, but sometimes, I'm in the mood for something else.  Sometimes I want a movie in which absolutely nobody gets punched.  And when that happens, I can always turn to Amol Palekar.  And that brings me to Naram Garam (1981).

Ramprasad (Amol Palekar) returns to his native village for a visit with his old teacher Vishnuprasad (A. K. Hangal).  Vishnuprasad has an ulterior motive; money is tight, his son Birju (Anand) has run off to become an actor, and his daughter Kusum (Swaroop Pasat) is so beautiful and talented that any suitable groom's family will be in a position to demand a sizable dowry.  Vishnuprasad asks Ramprasad if he would kindly consider marrying Kusum, and while Ram and Kusum have already rekindled a childhood spark, Ram can't think about marrying unless he can support a family, and he simply does not have the money, so he politely declines.

 

Ram works for Bhavani Shankar Bajpai (Uptal Dutt), a notorious miser who is obsessed with astrology.  Bhavani has finally resolved a decades-long legal dispute over a country house (thanks in part to Ram and no thanks at all to his astrologer) and he asks Ram to fix up the place and convert it from a bleak house to somewhere he can sit and remember his late wife.  

One day Ram returns to the house to find that Vishnuprasad and Kusum have moved in!  Vishnuprasad explains that they have finally been evicted and since Birju is a wandering actor, they have literally nowhere else to go.  Ran explains that it's not really his house, and the actual owner will be moving in within a month, but until then they should stay while he tries to figure something out, and hope that nobody else from his work finds out.

 

Somebody else finds out.  The estate manager, Gajanan (Suresh Chatwal), rushes down to the house to evict the squatters, but when he gets there, he's so smitten with Kusum that he offers to let them stay if Kusum marries him.  Vishnuprasad is initially thrilled, because he doesn't know how much of a creep Gajanan is, but Ram and Kusum are not thrilled.

 

Ram decides to go to Bhavani's younger brother Babua (Shatrughan Sinha) for help.  Babua is a tough-talking man of action, so he scares Gajanan off, then goes out to the house to evict the squatters . . . and immediately falls for Kusum.  Again, Ram and Kusum are not thrilled, so Ram has no choice but to appeal to Bhavani.  Bhavani's a respectable middle-aged widower and father of an adult daughter, so he's not likely to fall for Kusum, right?  Ordinarily, that would be the case, but Bhavani was just told by his astrologer that he will gain great wealth if he marries a woman whose name begins with 'K', so as soon as he sees Kusum, he's ready to propose.

 

The plot of Naram Garam is basically the romantic comedy version of "The Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly;" every apparent solution leads to an even bigger problem.  With a plot that simple, execution really matters, and the movie delivers.  Ram and Kusum have an easy, relaxed chemistry, and their relationship builds slowly and gently.  It's not a grand passion, but Ram is clearly the man for Kusum, because out of all her suitors, he's the only one that sees her as herself; the others all drift into fantasy sequences as soon as they lay eyes on her, using her as a peg for their silly notions of what a woman should be, to slightly misquote Forster.  

 

This is not an epic tale about star crossed lovers and a blazing passion that cannot be denied, it's a quiet story about two ordinary people trying to carve out a place in a world that is not always kind and often absurd.  Though I have to admit that Babua does punch a few people.  It's a mistake and he feels bad afterwards.

Come and see the violence inherent in the system!

Singham Returns (2014) is the sequel to 2011's Singham.  It's also the second movie in director Rohit Shetty's "Cop Universe" a police-focused cinematic universe which is only slightly less realistic than the Avengers movies.  It doesn't reference the previous movie at all, though, and doesn't feel like a sequel, so it works just fine as a standalone film.

 

DCP Bajirao Singham (Ajau Devgn) is an incorruptible, unstoppable supercop, like Shaktimaan with a badge.  He even has a similar code, believing that he's here to stamp out crime rather than criminals.  He is a bit more prone to feats of operatic violence than Shaktimaan is, though, and even Shaktimaan doesn't lecture people quite so much.  Singham and his right hand man Daya (Dayanand Shetty) are first seen dealing with a gang of young hoodlums who have stolen a policeman's hat.  This gives Singham the chance to nobly refuse a bribe, and to let the kids off with a warning, an act of mercy which is absolutely going to pay off before the end of the movie.

 

It's election season, and saintly politician Gurukant "Guruji" Acharya (Anupam Kher), Singham's old teacher with a name that translates roughly as "Teachy McTeacherface", has assembled a slate of bright young idealistic candidates.  This does not please his coalition partner Prakash Rao (Zakir Hussain.)  But Singham doesn't have time for politics; he's busy investigating the death of Constable Mahesh Jadhav (Ganesh Yadav), who was found dead in a submerged ambulance filled with cash.  The press immediately jump to all the wrong conclusions, and Singham's quest to clear the constable's name leads him to the spectacularly corrupt religious guru, Satyaraj Chander (Amole Gupte).  

 

Meanwhile, Singham's parents have arranged a potential engagement to spunky hairdresser Avni (Kareena Kapoor at her Kareena Kapooriest.)  While they do like each other, they both agree that they're not ready for marriage yet, but that's not enough to save them from sitcom shenanigans!

 

Singham Returns is a cop movie, but it follows the beats of a superhero movie, complete with an extended "Singham No More?" subplot.  It's also every bit as much of a fantasy as anything Marvel has ever produced; the carefully choreographed slow-motion violence is an action staple, but this is a movie about political corruption in which every single police officer is good and virtuous, so there's no reason to worry even if the entire police force decides to step outside the law in order to bring vigilante justice to politically untouchable criminals. It works in the movie, because it's a movie and the script is written so that this is fully justified and the correct choice, but in the real world, it's a terrifying concept.  I'd almost rather take my chances with Thanos.

They laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alike.

Amitabh Bachchan was the King of Bollywood in the Seventies and Eighties, the "angry young man" who captured the spirit of the era.  Today, Bachchan is the industry's reigning patriarch, the finest of stern father figures, and he's branching out into a number of offbeat roles.  But there's a long stretch of time between these two periods in which Bachchan was appearing in movies like Bade Miyan Chote Miyan (1998).  

 

Bachchan plays police inspector Arjun Singh, who is not particularly angry or young.  Singh has a mother (Sushma Seth), a spunky younger sister named Seema (Raveena Tandon), and a partner, Pyare Mohan (Govinda).  Pyare and Seema secretly love each other, but they know Arjun would never approve, so they plan to get Arjun married to someone, hoping that it will put him in a better mood.

 

Meanwhile, hotel maid Madhu (Divya Dutta) sees smuggler Zorawar (Paresh Rawal) and his henchmen murdering a police officer.  She escapes, and files a report with Pyare and Arjun, but when she returns Zorawar is waiting and kills her.  Madhu's roommate Neha (Ramya Krishnan) witnesses this murder, escapes, and calls the police, but insists she will only speak to Pyare.  Since Pyare is out, the Commissioner (Anupam Kher) orders Arjun to pretend to be Pyare.  He does, and takes her to hide out at Pyare's home, which means that Pyare has to go and stay at Arjun's house.  With Seema.  Wackiness ensues.

 

Arjun and Neha fall in love, because it's that sort of movie, but she still thinks that he is Pyare, which means that a mistaken identity plot is inevitable.  It doesn't last long, though, and soon both couples are happily in love and Zorawar politely steps out of the spotlight so that the movie can introduce Bade Miyan and Chote Miyan (Bachchan and Govinda), two thieves who happen to look exactly like Arjun and Pyare, leading to an entirely different mistaken identity plot, this time partly cribbed from Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. 

 

Despite the tenuous Shakespearean connection, though, this is an aggressively dumb movie.  The pacing is off, with much of the early runtime devoted to setting up the first mistaken identity plotline, a plotline which is almost immediately discarded.  Zorawar just wanders from place to place menacing and murdering, rather than following any sort of coherent scheme, and one of his henchmen is killed at least twice but still shows up for the final fight scene.  And the movie never quite decides which Bachchan-Govinda pairing are the protagonists until the very end.

On the other hand, aggressively dumb movies can be fun, sometimes.  Bade Miyan Chote Miyan has some funny jokes and goofy action scenes and brightly colored dance numbers with terrible costumes and a completely gratuitous cameo by Madhuri Dixit.  Clearly a lot of people liked it, since it was the second biggest box office success of 1998, only overshadowed by megahit Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.  It was one of the high points of the low point of Amitabh Bachchan's career.