This post was originally inspired by Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania, but then it went in a more general turn, a discussion of the very best kind of romance which shows both characters growing and changing.
I loooooooooove Humpty Sharma ki Dulhania. I was really not expecting a film that enjoyable, or that well-made. It’s a re-imagining of DDLJ, certainly, but in a world where DDLJ never existed (can you imagine how bleak and empty such a world would be? Shahrukh would be a talented actor who never quite made it, and we would be in the 3rd decade of trying to make another Amitabh happen in increasingly unimaginative action films, while the diaspora audience was continually ignored. Oh, and Yash Raj films would be bankrupt), Humpty Sharma could actually stand on its own as a perfectly good film.
It can stand on its own not because it is so different from DDLJ, but because it is so similar in all the ways that matter. It has the same brilliant big beating heart at the middle of it. Both movies, ultimately, are about a boy and girl who find their opposite half in each other. It’s not about falling passionately in love, it’s about falling passionately in like, in compatibility, in who they are when they are together. It’s about seeing how two very different people fill the gaps in each other. It’s more than sharing a love, it’s sharing a life.
Before DDLJ, I can’t really think of a movie that did this. And since DDLJ, I can count on one hand the other films that have succeeded at it. Really, I would just say Humpty, Jab We Met, Socha Na Tha, and maybe Chennai Express (Obviously, I haven’t seen every film in the world! If you think there is one I have missed, after reading all of my restrictions, let me know in the comments). It’s a really specific thing, that is kind of easier to define by what it isn’t, than what it is.
First, there’s the films where there is no real journey, no change. The “love at first sight” films. Or, love at 20th sight. Really, any time they fall in love because of one single magical moment, whether it is the first moment or the last. Dilwale, say. They are two very different people who are in love and out of love and in love again. But you barely see the love and connection build between them. You only see a magic bond that suddenly appears with no effort on their parts. Or, more to the point, on the part of the scriptwriter/director. The couple has to be in love for the plot to work, so they throw in some random conversation, a couple of moments of sexual tension, and then have their eyes meet as a song starts. It’s the same technique films have been using since before Mughal-E-Azam. And it works! It definitely works, I believe in those love stories and I enjoy watching them, and I get all swoony in the movie theater. But I believe in them as a fantasy. Watching a movie like that and then watching DDLJ is the difference between watching Devdas and watching Neerja.
(See, like this! Swoony, but not believable)
There are a good number of romances that don’t go the fantasy route, that feel real. But DDLJ is also showing a very particular kind of real feeling relationship. Raj and Simran are at a transition point in their lives and we see, in exquisite slow detail, how they grow together and change each other. There are plenty of movies where we fully get to know the hero and heroine, we see how and why they fit together, we even see them grow and change in order to fit together better. It’s not just a sudden magical moment that changes everything. But we don’t usually see them really changing each other, we have these huge gaps in their contact, in which they each take a leap forward, but they don’t need the other’s constant presence to force them to do it.
For instance, Hum-Tum is a great romance, and it is a great couple that is fun to watch together. But we only see them together in these disconnected moments, their growth as people takes place in between times, when they are alone. The same thing happens in Yeh Jawaani…Hai Deewani, and Love Aaj Kal. Even in Jaane Tu…Ya Jaane Na, they stay in touch, but they are on separate journeys for much of the film. In DDLJ and films like it, our hero and heroine are together on this journey, literally and metaphorically. They change because they are beating away at each other constantly, forcing each other into a different mold through their interactions.
(What would it have been like to watch this couple the whole movie? See how they keep fighting and making up and slowly become partners? Instead, we left them after 20 minutes, and met them again after 5 years apart)
This kind of film is not an easy thing to write, and it is not an easy thing to act, and (most importantly), it is not an easy thing to cast! Obviously, the couple has to have great sexual chemistry, that part has to be believable even while they appear to hate each other. But more than that, they have to be able to naturally slip into complimentary characters. But while the actors need to be comfortable in the character’s skin, it also needs to be characters that the audience will see as actual characters, not just the star pretending to “act”. This is the problem with, for instance, K3G. Or, not really a problem, a difference. Do you ever really forget you are watching Shahrukh and Kajol and just see Rahul and Anjali?
And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have characters so far outside of the actors’ natural personality, that it just feels like they are playing dress-up the whole time, instead of really connecting. Like Dil Bole Hadippa, which I quite enjoy, but which I was watching the whole time very aware that this was Rani “pretending” to be a Punjabi performer, and Shahid “pretending” to be a bitter London returned soccer champ.
(I think that’s why they added this song at the end of the film, so we can finally see them be the people we believe they are, not the people the script tells them to be. Or else, because Rani wanted to show off her new bikini body. Either way, it’s still my favorite part of the movie!)
And, of course, they have to be playing characters who are believable together, but not obvious. Dil To Pagal Hai, for instance, Madhuri and Shahrukh had some fun spark, and a few fight scenes, but mostly they were set up as being “made for each other”. The audience never really thought “wait, I don’t see how this can ever work out!” DTPH, and movies like it, run the danger of feeling like they are simply treading water, as two obviously compatible people try to avoid ending up together. In DDLJ, in the beginning, Raj and Simran truly do not look like a couple that could ever work. She is too prim, he is too crude, there is no way they can fall in love (short of a magical eyes meeting fantasy shortcut). But then we see them get to know each other, and we the audience get to know them better at the same time, and it all starts to make sense. And because it took so much work to get them to a place where they can meet in the middle, you end up being that much more invested in their relationship when it finally happens.
The hardest part, I think, is being brave enough to give an entire film over to this slowly building relationship. There are plenty of movies that start to build a DDLJ kind of relationship, and then just give up after an hour, because it is so slooooooooow. And often, those are my favorite parts of the film, before the director gives up and switches to a higher gear. For instance, the romance in Gadar: Ek Prem Katha is really beautiful and carefully constructed and strong and believable. It hits everything I’ve been talking about, they are two miss-matched people who grow together and change through their constant interactions. It’s not an immediate love at first sight, it is a series of incremental movements as they come closer and closer. And it is a brilliant casting, two actors playing characters similar to what they have done before, but also distinctly different, and who seem like they could never fit together, until suddenly you see that they are perfect. But it’s all over and done with after an hour, and we switch to an entirely different kind of movie. Speaking of historicals, Jodha-Akbar has the same problem. It’s not a cut and dried first half-second half thing, its scene by scene, we suddenly leave our love story and cut over to politics or religion or war instead, because it is just too hard to maintain a 3 hour love story!
(This is the resolution of the love story, but then the movie keeps going for another 20 minutes with a battle scene)
Even if a director is willing to do a full 3 hour love story, they can still get bored with all the talky-talk and want to just skip ahead and reset. Like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, which did a brilliant job of building the love triangle in the first half, making you really believe in both Rahul-Anjali and Rahul-Tina as a viable couple. But rather than continuing to slowly build that conflict (can you imagine a K2H2 where Anjali doesn’t leave and Rahul realizes he loves her and has to break Tina’s heart? Never mind, that’s just Mujshe Dosti Karoge and Kabhi Alveda Na Kehna), it breaks the couples apart and jumps 9 years into the future. I love Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, and I find the characters and their relationships completely real and completely believable. But they are different people in the first and second half. We aren’t watching Rahul and Anjali fall in love for 3 hours, we are watching Young Rahul and Young Anjali fall in love, and then watching a distinctly different Old Rahul and Old Anjali fall in love.
DDLJ solved this second half problem by just refusing to solve it. You don’t notice while watching it, but ultimately, the whole second half of the film had no stakes. Sure, there is a fight scene, and a dramatic twilight speech between lovers, but really it is all resolved at the interval when Shahrukh finds the bell she left him and knows she loves him as well. No matter what, they are going to be together. Kajol may be sad and doubtful, but the audience knows he is on his way. And once they are together, Shahrukh may insist on getting her family’s permission, but Kajol is planning to elope no matter what. They always know they will be married and their love story will have a happy ending, so why are we even watching any more?
This is the brilliance of the “not without your father’s permission!” twist to the plot. Unlike Bobby, which similarly devoted tons of time to building the relationship between the young people, but it then switched gears into making it “us against the world!” in the second half. Same with Qayamet Se Qayamet Tak and partially with Maine Pyar Kiya. It’s a standard structure, the first half is the couple falling in love in isolation, the second is testing their love against society. Except, here, there is no test. They are both of age, they both have British passports, they can leave at any time. We know his father has already given his approval. Nothing is stopping them from leaving. It’s not “us against the world!”, it’s “well, we already have the world, let’s just stop here a bit and see if we can get the moon as well.”
Ultimately, after “Tumse Dekho”, Kajol and Shahrukh are essentially married. Nothing is going to break their relationship apart. We have seen the culmination of their romance. But then the movie keeps going, and we keep seeing them. This is what makes the relationship in this film special, and different. We see them not just falling in love, but BEING in love. Working at love. Fighting over silly things like when to break a fast, figuring out how they are going to be as a couple, no longer questioning their commitment or their mutual love, instead questioning how they will live, what values they will share, what surprises might still be left along the way.
That is what sets aside DDLJ‘s true heirs. That they build and build and build a slow and real romance, they reach the culmination point, and then just keep going. That’s why Humpty (uch, that name!) and Kavya have to have sex in Humpty Sharma, and Aditya has to live for a while as though he is married to Geet in Jab We Met, and Viren and Aditi have to consider eloping in Socha Na Tha, and Rahul and Meena have to be “married” at the temple on the mountain top in Chennai Express. And then the movie keeps going.
(I just realized these are the same song with the genders reversed. In both, one partner considers them to be married, and is living their life that way, regardless of the attitude of the other partner. Also, I would not want to work for a man who keeps fantasizing a fake wife in board meetings)
When I wrote this post originally, Jab Harry Met Sejal hadn’t yet come out. It turned out to be a fascinating extension of this theory to the farthest possible point. People who didn’t like the film, complained because “nothing happened”. But that was the point, Imtiaz’s experiment. Our hero and heroine are essentially “married” by less than an hour into the film. And then we get to see what comes after, their minds catching up with their feelings. With no outside conflicts or impediments, just a couple in love working things out, the way couples in love do.
dontcallitbollywood 
So where does RNBDJ fit? That is one of my favorite romantic movies, because of the journeys of the two main characters. Yes, I think Suri grows, too, but through his experience as Raj. And it is one of my favorite Anushka roles, because it demanded so much out of an absolute newcomer, and she makes the transformation believable.
Also, does this formula work for South Indian movies?
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I think this formula works for all the best romances! It’s just that only in Indian film are love stories given this kind of prominence, not just the romantic part of them but the coming of age part of them. It’s why people love Gone With the Wind, right? Rex and Scarlett grow up together and are different people by the end. Pride and Prejudice, same thing. Heck, even Twlight a little bit! And Jane Eyre and Little Women and now that I think about it, those are all books, right? In the usual movie, there just isn’t enough time for this kind of slow growth and change, but Indian films give you the same plot space and characters that in other places you would only get from novels.
On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 1:15 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I’d argue for Barefoot in the Park. The ending is a little too abrupt and magical, but it’s the first movie I saw that explored the feelings of a couple who have been carried this far on a wave of love, but now have to learn to live together, and help each other grow by being with each other. With “society” represented elegantly by her mother, the upstairs neighbor, a phone repair person, and a mail carrier. 🙂
Also, Chalte Chalte! The problem there is we leave them halfway through the “figuring it out/growing up” part. And this type of growing together in love is my favorite part of The Namesake. Irrfan and Tabu, sigh.
But, for me, there are many types of romance stories which are good. So many different kinds of romance!
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Sitcoms! Sitcoms do this really really well I think, better than most dramas. There’s a whole history of “young couple figuring it out together” kind of show that can run for years and never really run out of couple conflicts, or couple moments of falling even more in love. That mixture of humor and heart, and having a new small conflict for each weeks show can really work well. You got me thinking about that with Barefoot in the Park because it was made into a TV series. In the drama shows, they always have to make the couple break up, or ladle on more and more tragedies in their lives, but sitcoms can deal with the small moments of life that make up a marriage.
On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 2:05 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Oh yeah! I remember really liking Mad About You. Now I can’t stand the sitcom format, which is kind of too bad. Grace and Frankie being the one exception.
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Now that I think about it, almost all sitcoms have the format of “what comes after the happy ending?” Or at least, the ending. The pilot sets up a situation and resolves it (roommates move in together and bond, couple gets married, person gets new job) and then after that rapid set-up, the stable situation lasts and lasts and lasts through many small changes. Golden Girls, Grace and Frankie, Cheers, Frasier, they all kind of are about what happens after everything is settled.
On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 2:56 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Different but related, I recall Hugh Laurie saying that the character of House MD couldn’t really evolve very much because that’s not how TV works. He said, in a movie, your characters had better be different at the end of your movie than they were at the beginning. But in a TV series that centers on one or two main characters, they must stay essentially the same because the show is about putting these known quantities in different circumstances, around different people, and the reactions that happen. If you change the central character/s, you’ve changed the show.
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Weirdly, I think that restriction is what makes TV character growth more realistic some times. Real life people don’t neatly fix all their problems and become different in the course of a two hour movie run time. But with a TV show, the format pushes them to stay the same but the reality of writing and acting the same characters for years will bleed through and cause small almost invisible changes. Looking at a show’s first episode and last it always feels like massive change (to me), but you can’t see it while it is happening because it is all little things that happen over years and years of episodes.
Dragging this back to Indian film, I think that is one of the advantages of the 3 hour run times, it forces the characters to grow slowly as the plot plays out. Something like Jab We Met has a pretty standard simple rom-com plot, but because it takes it’s time the relationship and the characters feel so much more real, their changes more believable.
On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 3:14 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Agree. I really hope they don’t keep pushing to get shorter than the common 2 1/2 hour time. It would take out that luxury of taking time to live with the characters for a while. Including via songs!
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Yes DDLJ had excellent character development. Maybe films like Wake Up Sid too but I don’t think it had such a seamless kind of relationship in it, where it seemed so well written that it wasn’t even written. Don’t know if I’m making sense lol.
I wonder how Kal Ho Na Ho would have been if Naina and Aman got together earlier on, around the time she told Sweetu she loves him. Naina loved Aman because of the way he made her feel and for his irritating but very well meaning persona. I love the film so much but I never really wondered why Aman loved Naina, it seemed kind of sudden. He had moments with her but she was usually irritated with him until after the restaurant part but I think he loved her from the beginning itself. But they never really became friends.
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Kal Ho Na Ho is such an interesting movie, I want to revisit it sometime and focus on that love triangle.
Whether on purpose or not, the relationship between Aman and Naina ends up feeling somewhat shallow to me. She is in love with him because he makes her smile, brings her out of herself, and so on and so forth. Basically, in love with him for how he makes her feel, not for himself. And he is in love with her because he had that first startled moment of attraction at first sight. They have that beginning of the love story, but then never get the rest of it. But on the other hand, somehow Naina and Saif ended up drifting into something deeper without ever having that beginning of the love story. The last line is “Friendship is the beginning and the end of the love story” or something like that, which sounded really depressing to me the first time I heard it. But I think that’s what it is talking about, Naina and Aman had the “love” but never got to have anything else. Saif and Preity had the friendship and the sort of long term caring for each other, just had to find that spark which isn’t that hard to find, in the end.
I also read it that Naina and Aman were both people who had been cut off from love until now, which is what made just this hint of a beginning of a love story so special to them. She had her horrible family that never let her think about her own feelings. And he had his medical condition which made him cut himself off from emotions. They jump on this first moment of connection because it is the first for them. But with Saif, he is constantly having these shallow feelings for people and little sparks, he knows to appreciate the deeper feelings he has for Preity.
On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 3:22 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Yeah I see what you mean-about why Saif felt the way he did about his relationship with Naina. Hadn’t thought about that before. But let’s be honest here- Shah Rukh is great at being extremely charming and creating the perfect kind of atmosphere that was needed between Aman and Naina. Because he’s very romantic and gives off that vibe of the person you want the main character to be with. But if Shah Rukh was playing Saif’s role and Saif was cast as Aman instead, I don’t think people would have wanted Naina to be with Aman as much as they did when Shah Rukh played it. Shah Rukh knows how to create that sexual tension very well. Had he played Rohit instead of Saif, the audience would have wanted Naina to be with Rohit and they’re would be no story lol. Because he’d be friendly and romantic. It’s just the acting style. Saif is good at friendshipppy, flirty romances like Hum Tum and Salaam E Ishq. But Shah Rukh brings the intensity and sexual tension. Had he played Rohit he would have been way too intense and romantic at the parts where he tells Naina he likes her and such (after that chai din ladki in plan) and it would have been too much for the audience to not want her to be with him.
Aman was Naina’s first love I guess but they never got to explore it. Their attraction to each other did seem kind of shallow. Had they explored it they probably would have been a good couple. I guess Naina was so inexperienced in love that it meant a lot to her and her happiness depended on it, and the fact that she was depressed previously, but if it was any other character, who had dated before and loved different people, she would know that the world doesn’t end there!
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Oh, you are so right! Shahrukh playing Saif’s role would have killed any conflict, we would just be waiting for Naina to realize where he true love was. But as it was, you could believe that Naina fell for him immediately, that he shocked her out of her depression, because he is just so charming. This is one of my problems with Bandini, I just don’t buy the passionate first love for Ashok Kumar over Dharmendra, that casting makes no sense.
Agree, we see enough of Aman and Naina to see they really could be good together. If they had had longer, they could have built up a great life. But as it was, they had barely started something and she already had a whole relationship with Saif.
On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 3:56 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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You gave me a thought I didn’t have until now: that JHMS is another kind of DDLJ.
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But to be honest I don’t really understand jaane tu ya jaane na and movies like that. It’s a fun film and really well made, but I personally never understand the whole “we are so close and best friends and don’t like each other in that way at all” suddenly changing to “we love each other” simply because of some “bad” experiences that each of them go through separately. Which ultimately tell them they love each other. This I don’t really get.
The way I see it is- generally when you meet someone, there is attraction or there isn’t. Let’s say there isn’t. So you don’t find this person attractive but you become friends and get to know them well. Sometime in the early part of the friendship after discovering the kind of person they are, you should now find them attractive right? If you end up liking them, the time that you start being attracted to them should be around now right? Maybe after a month? Because within a month of taking everyday, you can see the way ones mind works, they’re habits, the kind of person they are, the type of lifestyle they lead. And you can also observe them a lot and if their personality becomes attractive to you, that will spill over into their looks. Because they’re body language and expressions will be because of their personality, emotions, thoughts- and everything will be attractive to you. Especially if you thought they were decent looking to begin with, but you didn’t have a crush on them. That will easily change from decent to attractive.
I don’t really get this “being friends for years and even suggesting to get the other one a significant other…all while “loving” them which they are unaware of until later”
I mean, if they really love their friend AND are physically attracted to them, realistically it shouldn’t take someone older than a kid or preteen ( who would be very shy and unaware ) to not come to terms with the fact that they love their friend. Love can’t be hidden SO deeply under all of their friendship, not when it involves physical attraction. It’s there or it isn’t. Not when you’re insisting to everyone in your life that you don’t like your friend….then you’re suddenly in love with them? Because they’re with someone else and you’re hurt by matters of your own life?
And somewhere in the middle of all of this you realise you find them attractive? I’ve never seen a couple in real life who got together this way.
A more realistic story would be two people who meet and aren’t attracted to each other much and they think they don’t have much in common because they’re different, which they’re both assuming just by looking at the other person and basing off of stereotypes or little quirks. They become friends and then slowly discover each other’s personalities and through all of this become attracted to each other. Of course a lot of movies are like this. I think DDLJ is like this?
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You’re so right about all those “friends who don’t know they are in love” movies.
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But, that’s 96! You were just saying how you love it! They are friends and don’t think about it until they are 16 and then everything changes.
On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 4:01 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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96 is different because they weren’t “real” friends (and also were very innocent an young). They talked sometimes, he opened her lunchbox , but they never met after school, went shopping or just pass time together. She didn’t even know where he live!
Unlike some other movies where boy and girl are always together and know everything one about another.
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The only way I can make sense of the “close friends, don’t realize we love each other” trope is if we assume the connection is so deep that it goes beyond attraction. If they have two mental boxes in their head, and one is for the fluttery tingly falling in love kind of feelings and the other is for the deep connection and caring they feel for their friend, and they think you can’t have both in the same person. JTYJ nods to that if you watch closely the reactions of the other characters, the friend group and their parents all kind of know they are in love with each other, it’s only the central characters that think love “should” be a certain way, and what they have isn’t possibly love.
Plus, attraction is just unpredictable, right? You may not spark with a person at all, and then they get a new haircut or you see them in a different out fit, or they just go away for a few weeks and then come back (like in Niram), and you suddenly start to feel something.
One thing I think a lot of stories don’t tell well is the moment when “I love you as my closest friend” turns into attraction. Because it can happen, you can be completely uninterested in someone that way and then suddenly something sparks and it is all different. That I could believe. KKHH does that well with the basketball game, they go from shy old friends, to being all kinds of attracted to each other, and the rest of the plot makes sense. Thinking about Jaane Tu, I don’t think they have exactly that clear of a moment in that movie. It just sort of moves from “best friends” to “in love” without a moment when we see the change.
On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 3:43 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Yes I see what you mean about the attraction part but like you said I think a critical scene like that was needed in the film. Since theyre already good friends, a scene of them being really attracted to each other would have been the one thing missing to making them seem perfect together. Instead the film just kept showing them being jealous which just seemed possessive or like they’d somehow always found their friend attractive but didn’t realise it until they saw them act as a “boyfriend” or “girlfriend”, which made it feel a little sudden. I know the film was trying to show that their deep friendship and chemistry is much stronger than any other relationship they can form, and that they just needed the courage and time to grow to accept the other one’s faults (like her aggressiveness and his completely unagressivess that she didn’t like) but I just felt the execution was done in a really obvious way.
If they make him get with this girl whose head is in the clouds and her get with someone so aggressive he hits people, of course the audience will want the leads together. And it seems almost too obviously done- that she wants a manly guy who will fight for her when she’s in danger and she gets this guy who has the extreme negative version of manliness, to the point of hitting innocent people.
And he wants this sweet romantic girl and he gets this girl who is so lost and can’t even come to terms with the things in her life that actually upset her.
Aditi is her opposite- if Aditi’s dad was an alcoholic and her mom was silently dealing with it she’d probably be screaming about it and actively trying to do something about it.
And Jai would never hit innocent people.
Had they chosen normal people to be Jai’s gf and Aditi’s bf, nice normal people but people who just didn’t have the chemistry and connection with them to last longer than a short term relationship, then Aditi and Jai’s love for each other may have seemed more realistic. Their discovery of it.
I know the film was trying to show that who you “pick” to fall in love with won’t be the one who do perfect for you, and I get that part, it’s a good message. But the execution was a little too obvious, with their ideal types being exact opposites of each other who later turn out to be bad people to be with who suddenly tell them that they’re best friend (who happens to be an exact opposite of their gf/bf) is the perfect one.
It’s a cute love story but not the raw kind that leaves you so amazed.
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Yep, makes total sense. The only explanation I can think of is if there was supposed to be a bit of a message that this couple was so messed up and in denial that they ended up finding temporary partners who matched their mess up. Aditi is hung up on Jai and dating in revenge (even if she doesn’t admit it to herself) and ends up with a guy who is looking for a relationship to get back at his own ex. She wants someone super aggressive and macho, the opposite of Jai. He wants someone super young and innocent, the opposite of his ex-girlfriend. Same with Jai, he is in his own denial about his parents, not accepting the violent masculine side of himself that he gets from his father, and he ends up with someone who is in her own denial about what her parents are. But you are right, it’s a romance I enjoy, it just doesn’t really stick with me the way some others do.
On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 4:36 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Yes, I see what you mean about them attracting someone towards them just like them and it just isn’t right but they think it is because they’re inexperienced and don’t know love is deeper than finding someone exactly like you want. But one thing I do like about Jai and Aditi is that she’s the aggressive one and more blunt and harsh and rude, which is actually not uncommon at all between a guy and girl. But most Bollywood films always portray the girl as more of the “good” one and he’s the “bad” one. But I’m Indian and I know if so many couples who aren’t like that at all
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Yeah I see what you mean! They were too inexperienced to realize love is as simple as someone being your type. But one thing I do like about the movie is that it was different in that Aditi was the more aggressive, harsh, brash one. Usually movies show the guy as being “bad” and the girl is “good” and he likes that good . But there are actually a lot of couples where I feel it’s kind of similar to the film.
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Oh my comment seems to have posted twice, didn’t realise the first was anonymous, I thought it didn’t go through so I rewrote it.
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I think the best friends falling in love after years is the reason why I could never like Monica and Chandler. They were good friends and thought the other is cute I guess but suddenly through their friends with benefits thing they fall in love. It’s just not as romantic and believable as Ross and Rachel. Who each pine for each other separately and different points. Rachel’s is a bit superficial cause her crush on Ross is awakened when she finds out he likes her. Ross has always liked her but mainly for her looks, when they were kids. And only after becoming good friends with her does he really, really like her in spite of negative aspects of her personality. But then Rachel’s attraction for Ross is tested while he’s with someone else and happy and she sees she isn’t happy with anyone else but him. With Monica and Chandler don’t see what happened. We don’t see them “crushing” on each other.
Btw sorry for the slightly irrelevant comments!
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I love irrelevant comments!
I was also thinking about Friends with this discussion. You are making me realize that they tried to retcon Chandler and Monica a little to make sense. They wrote in a flashback to show that in their very very first meeting, they were mutually attracted. But she was his friend’s little sister and he was in college and she was in high school, they definitely couldn’t have gotten together then. And then life got in the way, by the time the show proper starts they have been friends for so long that the attraction is kind of buried under everything else they share. Even without the retcon, it was still always there, Chandler always flirted with her a little bit but she shut it down. So you could read it that he had been attracted to her all along, she had ignored him because of her own well-established issues with falling for inappropriate men, but the drunkenness and emotion of the London night let’s her stop stopping herself. I find that much more believable, that they took a while to discover their feelings and then once they did it all just happened with a lot of talking and working things out, than the Ross and Rachel version where they spend more time apart than together.
On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 4:48 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I can’t relate to most Hindi romances cos they seem to be set in a world where real life concerns like money,bills and career are not important.The characters are so loaded that they can afford to pursue their glamourous lifestyles, extended vacations & wait for the moment of enlightenment to come while traveling across the globe.There’s no question of heart v/s stomach/responsibilities or real life catching up and taking the sheen out of a dreamy romance.
Maayanadhi a good romance movie for me where the girl’s need to be independent and make a life of her own overrides her need to be with the guy who is loaded & dreamy but is unreliable.
The other great romance i loved is Thoovanathumbikal where the hero’s heart is pulled in two directions and he can’t figure out which woman he loves more. It’s a unique conflict knowing you can be in love with more than one person at the same time. Alaipayuthey- because it’s not enough to fall in love and get married but you have to keep working at it to let the romance live on.
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I hate the movie trope of “love is more important than money”. Not just in Hindi films, but in all films from everywhere, the way they make it seem like even caring about money and practical concerns a little bit is betraying your heart. The new kind of smaller romances do a better job with that, I think, Sui Dhaaga was all about it, and it was part of Badhaai Ho too. Now that I think about it, that’s the entire plot of Chalte Chalte, magical true love at the start running up against real life.
The movie that bothers me the most in terms of forgetting the practicalities is Arjun Reddy. The “and now I will travel the world to find peace” section right at the end is so ridiculous.
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