This has 8 parts in total, in case you were wondering. Which should take me neatly into tomorrow and keep my blogging full with little effort on my part, yaaaay!

Okay, Shahrukh is taking off his sunglasses and revealing that he has brown eyes.  Also, this Shahrukh is called Vicky Malhotra, and the other one was called Ajay, so WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?!?!

After giving us a chance to appreciate this thusness, Shahrukh puts his red helmet on and takes off!  In his little red race car thing!  It’s the kind that looks sort of like a zipper foot on a sewing machine, if that makes sense to anyone?  Long skinny middle bit, side wheel track thingies, strangely sturdy and delicate at once.

And Daddy is driving one that looks just the same, but yellow.  And, Race (race race race race race.  I always hear the echo, thanks to another Abbas-Mustan movie.  Called Race race-race-race-race)!  Truly, is there any sport more boring than car racing?  Surely not.  They drive around and around their little track, and Shahrukh is winning, winning, winning, Kajol is pouting, pouting, pouting, and at the last minute, yellow Daddy car pulls ahead, and he wins!!!!

Kajol is very very happy!  But Abbas-Mustan is less creepy than Rakesh Roshan, so she doesn’t jump up and down as much.  She just jumps once, right into his arms.  Daddy’s, not SRK’s.  But, SRK isn’t far behind!  He says “Excuse me, sir” and they turn to see him, in slow motion, with triumphal music, taking off his helmet and shaking out his hair.  Ewwwwww!  Ew ew ew ew ew!

I mean, I can appreciate a good post-helmet hair shake as well as anybody, but his hair is just soaking wet!  Like, little drops are flying off of it.  And, his face is coated in liquid too.  And this is supposed to be his sweat, right?  Like, maybe, on the film set, it was actually water sprayed on him to look like sweat, but for his character, it’s supposed to be his manly auto-racing sweat.  Blech!

Kajol does not react like me, her face is all “me likey!” in the reaction shot.  And also, “me have a stupid hat that is barely perched on top of my head.”

(this face)

So, Shahrukh comes up and has a nice close close up of his face, when he says “I lost on purpose.  Sometimes, one must lose to win.  You are my Guru, sir.”  Kajol lowers her eyes in shy delight at his great shareef-y-ness.  Daddy is also impressed, and asks what he does.  He works in sports cars!  Coincidentally, just what Kajol was looking for!  The sports cars, not the boy.  But based on her face, I am pretty sure she will take the boy too.

By the way, this whole time, Shahrukh has that cocky SRK half smile thing going on with the corner of his mouth, and is looking them confidently and directly in the eyes.  So, very different from green-eyed shy Shahrukh with the mugging and joking and reading books and wearing glasses.

Daddy takes his leave, Shahrukh walks away, Kajol calls out “Excuse me!”, and Shahrukh stops, pauses, and then turns with this great “oh yeah, she’s calling me back, because I am the hottest thing on earth” smirk.  Which he drops for just a normal charming smile once he gets up to her.  She starts to introduce herself again, and Shahrukh cuts her off saying “Your name is Priya Chopra.  And you want to know why I lost the race.” He bends his head slightly so they are eye to eye, and finishes “for your sake.  Didn’t you say all those Vicky, Micky, Lickys would lose to your Daddy?”  Kajol looks down and bites her lip a little, because she did say that.  Shahrukh gets that half smile going again and finishes “And if this Vicky, Micky, Licky were to win, it would break your heart.” Kajol looks up.  Shahrukh has those puppy eyes going now, “And how could I break the heart of a beautiful girl like you?”  Smile goes away, eyes are serious now, “That’s why I said that to win sometimes, one has to lose too.”  Kajol is all in, just staring at him now. “And the one who grabs victory like this, is called a ‘Baazigar’ [juggler].”  Kajol is basically hypnotized by this point.  Shahrukh gives her a smile and starts to turn away, then turns back and asks “What is such a person known as?”  Kajol whispers “Baazigar.”  Shahrukh nods, gives her a last smile and a look, and strides away.

Daaaayyy-yyyyaaam!  That is how it is done, ladies and gentleman!  I’m still pretty happy with their Karan-Arjun scene being the first time together onscreen (unless I mixed up filming dates, which I am becoming increasingly afraid I did0, but this one is way way hotter!  And like, immediate over-whelming hotness, not a sort of slow build as they get to know each other.  But it’s also pretty one-sided, SRK is hypnotizing her, but Kajol isn’t really doing much.

Speaking of hypnotized Kajol, we cut to her running around her hideous living room (big black leather sofas in the background, weird pink feathers in the foreground), wearing a sort of cheap looking turquoise nightgown.  She jumps on the sofa, rolls off it onto the floor, writhes about a bit, finally runs up the stairs, falls onto her bed, gasping with emotion, and cut to this song! Which SRKajol tried to explain in a recent interview, but really, there is no explanation.

Song over, we have sexy electric guitar sounds and Shilpa Shetty in a swimsuit.  Man, they really put her through her sexy paces in this!  She is swimming in a hotel pool, and a creepy old man is watching, who becomes so aroused that he spits out his fake teeth?  Is that a thing?  Anyway, Kajol comes running up, all excited, and wearing ugly jean shorts and a weird orange top.  But way more modestly dressed than Shilpa.  These are the advantages of coming from a film family instead of having to work your way in!  No need to pass the sexy swimsuit test!

Anyway, the girls exchange notes about their respective lovers.  Shilpa is so in love, she claims, she could even jump from the 20th floor for her guy.  Kajol is less willing to make that kind of commitment, because Kajol has a strong sense of her own self-worth and healthy relationship boundaries.  They make plans for Shilpa to meet Kajol’s guy that afternoon.  But, Nooo!  It’s the same guy!  Or else, secret identical twins!  Or, doppelgangers which will lead to confusion!  Anyway, somethings going on and once they meet each other’s boyfriends, it will all fall apart!

Speaking of boyfriends, Kajol has changed out of the horrible outfit, and is now riding in the car with SRK driving.  He is, again, brown-eyed, calm and confident and cool.  And flirty!  He tries to steal a kiss and she shoves him off.  Kajol tries to distract him by talking about how much she has talked him up to her sister, but Shahrukh is not to be bought off with compliments!  He gives her a stern look.  She switches to asking about the car, and how fun it is to drive, and if she can drive it.  Shahrukh is still in a snit, so he says “No!”  And then she screams!  Shahrukh hits the brakes, what is it what is it!  Ice cream!  She wants ice cream!  Ooo, was that a reference in that one scene in Dilwale?

Well, they don’t have ice cream here!  But there is a stall selling coconut water, so he will get her that.  I guess he is done being mad.  Or at least enough of a gentlemen to do so much.  He leaps out of the car and runs over to the stall asking for “ice-cream, I mean, coconut water” because she’s got his mind all turned around!  And, of course, it was all a scam and Kajol pulls off in the car with Shahrukh running after.

Kajol is all happy, but!  Motorcycle louts!  They spot the pretty girl in the cool car and start following her.  Kajol gets away, but they catch up, and block her in.  She stops and orders them away, and the Lead Lout (who is wearing a terrible jacket) responds, “Her speech is very spicy.  Let’s see how she tastes.”  Ewwww!  Almost as gross as Shahrukh’s sweat hair!

Kajol agrees with me that it is super gross, and slaps them.  And then they pull her out of the car and force her down on the road and it looks like a way more explicit rape scene than we usually get in these films!  But, it only lasts a second, she pulls away and starts running into a public park (another one!  Love the use of middle class Bombay settings in this).  First, she hides under an umbrella with a southern stereotype (dark, old, lacivious), but she runs away from him too, down a path, and around a corner behind a bush.  The guys follow her, there is the sound of a couple of hits, and then she and Shahrukh come out, arm in arm, sipping on a coconut.

Okay, that was really cool!  On so many levels!  Not the whole sequence, just how it ended.  That he is such a gentlemen and so tough that no one can harm her under his watch, he will just magically appear and take care of it.  That they drop right back into dreamy love walking with the coconut, like this whole attempted rape thing was just a minor interruption of their date.  That Abbas-Mustan lets us imagine the invisible fight scene instead of showing it to us.

And then they spoil the whole thing by giving us an actual fight scene.  Which I will ignore, except for a bit right at the end, in protest of how it would have been much better to leave it at the magical Shahrukh appearance and return to date.

So, fight-fight-fight, and then right at the end, one of the louts pulls a knife and manages to land a slice on Shahrukh’s arm.  The whole fight has been pretty silly and light-hearted, Shahrukh has been laughing and saying one liners.  But now, he looks down at his arm, and the camera focuses on the top of his head, and then he looks up, and his face is totally different.  Like, scary madman different.  And he pulls off his belt and beats the guy viciously with it.  Kajol!  Break up with him!  I would!  And I love Shahrukh1  Again, Handy Hints from Hideous Hair characters: if your boyfriend goes from laughing and happy to viciously beating an injured man with his belt, this is not a well-balanced individual!

But Kajol does not do this, instead, she takes everyone to the police station.  Huh!  The police station!  It legitimately did not occur to me that attempted roadside rape was a crime that was worth reporting in India.  But Kajol is insistant!  Especially after she sees her old friend, Karan!  He is from college and he is now a police officer, and he gets all soft and dreamy when he sees her.  Which, no duh, it’s Kajol!  Everyone should get soft and dreamy!  It comes off a little odd from this guy, since he is all big and muscle-y with a mustache, but it is still understandable.

And, party!  Shilpa is dancing dancing dancing.  To this song, which I guess was a hit in India in 1993?  And now has been re-released in America or something?  I don’t know modern American music, but it’s definitely the same song!

And I’m going to call that a song sequence, and therefore a breaking point!  Come back tomorrow for part 4.