Subhash K Jha, in a new edition to his feature series, This Day That Year, turns the spotlight on Hrithik Roshan’s debut film, Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai, which released 26 years ago.
Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai, released on January 14, 2000 has much more to it than Farah Khan’s hookstep for Hrithik in the number ‘Ek pal ka jeena’.
The impression, falsely created over the years, is that of Hrithik dancing his way to superstardom in Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai. That is not quite the way this refined potboiler works. Indeed, writer-director Rakesh Roshan gives a new twist to the double-role formula.
This time, the two Hrithik Roshans were not long-lost twins. They were in no way related. That departure from the doppelganger formula gives the film a delectable spin. This is the first time that a debutant gets to play a double role in his first film as a leading man. Sure, Rajesh Khanna did it in Aradhana. But Khanna had a few flop films before that.
Roshan Junior swung into action in Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai. He plays the musician Rohit in Mumbai in the first-half and his lookalike Raj (another musician!!) in New Zealand in the second-half. There isn’t much to tell the two Hrithiks apart, and luckily Rakesh Roshan doesn’t make Hrithik No 2 stick on a moustache to tell them apart.
The fun quotient in Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai emerges from the pert, perky, polished packaging of the product. Rakesh Roshan has spared no expense to give the end-product a sheen of shine that we missed in his earlier films. The loud melodrama of Karan Arjun, the crudity of Koyla and the garishness of Kishen Kanhaiya are done away with in Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai.
So is the film fun to watch? Yes!! Has it dated? No and yes. While the locational changes and the vibrant music are still interesting, some of the purported comic relief, the romantic diversions and the supposed sentimentality with Aunt Lily (Farida Jalal) are markedly mildewed and antiquated.
However, Hrithik Roshan is a revelation in his debut as a leading man (he had done a couple of films as a child actor). I don’t think any of his subsequent films, some of them blockbusters, were able to capture his innocence as well as Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai.
