I am going to try super super super hard to write a totally new take on JHMS. After the thousands of words I have already written, this is going to be almost impossible. But I believe I can do it!

I’ve been listening to a lot of Jack Benny radio shows. Stick with me, I’m going to tie this together. Jack Benny was one of the creators of all kinds of concepts of serialized comic stories. Part of what he discovered was the beauty of creating basic characters and having them interact with them in a variety of situations. He had the over-smart valet, the wise-cracking secretary, the innocent tenor, and the ignorant band leader. And they would go on an airplane ride together, or a car trip, or simply sit around making wise cracks about the Academy Awards the day before. Once there was a firm grasp of what made these particular characters funny, the writers and actors could just take off and make anything work. And if you look at Jab Harry Met Sejal as a comedy, you can see that is what the writers and actors created. Two characters who are simply funny together.

This is a deep character study of two different people. But it is also a rom-com. And I don’t think I have looked at it yet as a simple rom-com. Or, more accurately, a situational comedy. These are two very different people in a very strange situation, and some of the time it just makes you laugh.

Our two leads each have a comic “bit” that they fall back on. Shahrukh is a cocky Punjabi who gets flustered and loses control when he is frustrated. And Anushka is a rich girl who always thinks she is right even as she says insane illogical things. Their early interactions are, simply, funny!

This is what humor is, bringing reality to a slightly heightened extreme. Shahrukh isn’t just a sexy Punjabi tour guide, he is the sexiest, so much so that he doesn’t know how to function with a woman immune to his charm. Anushka isn’t just a sheltered rich girl, she is so sheltered that she does not understand how men and women interact, what is and is not an appropriate question to ask.

Humor also comes from slight discomfort, laughing out of unease, or to avoid crying. The film isn’t afraid to hit that note too. Seeing Anushka push Shahrukh about what he did to the girl she saw him with the night before, and Shahrukh push Anushka about how far she has gone with her boyfriend, it doesn’t feel comfortable, But the film puts in some funny lines, some abrupt expression changes in the characters, and you end up releasing with a laugh instead of cringing away.

The humor is there, straight through. At the very end when Shahrukh tells a stranger in the washroom that he is going to a wedding with a twinkle in his eye. Or Anushka unthinkingly offering tea or coffee when Shahrukh shows up to surprise her. It’s not funny in the usual Hindi film way, the over the top physical humor or complex puns and references. It’s funny in a more gentle way, that arises from character types who are only slightly exaggerated beyond reality, and conflicts that reflect society.

So, what does the film look like as a whole if we see it as a comedy? Just in case, I am going to put in a spoiler bar.

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It’s a simple plot. A tour guide who is Punjabi and a little low class in his past, but currently a European playboy. And a rich girl who is superficially spoiled, but actually a bit kooky and unpredictable. The spoiled rich girl forces the tour guide to take her around Europe looking for an engagement ring. And then we get to see the two of them spark off each other, the kooky girl keeps surprising the tour guide into being flustered and speaking Punjabi. And the sophisticated tour guide keeps challenging her into new situations where she makes a fool of herself.

We see variations on their character types and the humor of it over and over again. For instance, at one point they are kidnapped, Shahrukh thinks quick and talks his way out of it with exaggeration and over acting. And then Anushka is released and immediately knees one of their captors in the groin. It’s funny, seeing Shahrukh act a bit too extreme, and Anushka do things that are a little over the top and unexpected. And it’s funny because we know them, and could kind of expect that their characters would act in this way.

That’s what makes this sort of humor slightly different. It doesn’t come from standard types, that’s a different sort of comedy (“dumb blonde”, “ignorant laborer”, and so on). It comes from these particular people. Particular characters that, as the audience becomes more and more familiar with them, just become funnier. Like, for instance, when we first meet Anushka she is a spoiled rich girl with a hidden insecurity. She is strangely confident in lots of areas, and strangely uncool and behind the times in other ways. We see her do little disco moves like this goofy nerdy dance style is all she knows. And then we learn that she loves to dance, it’s one area she feels confident in. So when we see her enthusiastically getting into disco style kareoke, we laugh. Each tidbit of character info builds on the previous one, and makes us better able to predict her actions, and enjoy them. There’s humor from the unexpected, but there’s also humor from the expected that goes slightly farther than we thought. Seeing Anushka and Shahrukh do a disco duet fits with what we already know about them, but we still laugh when we see their coordinated dance.

This film has a balance. If it wanted to, it could have leaned all the way into the humor. A different director would have made it about the funny set pieces, taken it slightly higher, and removed the darker sections. Or it could have leaned darker, taken out any sense of humor, any moment of gentle laughter, and left it with the two characters simply working through their dark issues without those moments of misunderstanding and exaggeration.

Including the humor was a choice. Let’s go back to the idea of “rom-com”. This can sometimes simply mean a comedy built around a romantic framework. Or it can mean a romance that has a happy ending (the Shakespearean definition). But most often it means exactly what it says. Romance is scary, and hard, and difficult. And like all scary and hard and difficult things, you can choose to cry or you can choose to laugh.

Let’s go back to those two character types. Shahrukh is a depressed lonely man who hides a deep sense of inferiority with superficial charm and ease, and turns to sex whenever he feels bad about himself. Anushka is a woman who has never truly felt loved, not in a sexual way or any other way, who had to develop an inner strength and confidence in order to survive the constant ignoring from her parents (which we see over the course of the film). This is tragic! This could be a film entirely made up of crying on each other’s shoulders, moments of missed connections that make us bit our lips in fear they will not find each other again, and just general fear that it won’t work out after all. But this film looks at the miracle of two people falling in love, and laughs at it instead of crying.