The good news about films like Kaise Kahoon Ke... Pyaar Hai is that you expect nothing. You know that it's made by a successful producer of yesteryear, Arjun Hingorani, with the sole intention of promoting his son, Amit.
You know that the plot will have nothing more or less shattering than the high-on-hype duds we have been watching since the beginning of this year. You can predict there will be five badly orchestrated dance sequences, three senseless fights, two emotional scenes and Johnny Lever.
The bad news is, you've still got to watch it. As the film's synopsis suggests, this is one of the many ways in which destiny intervenes in your life....
So you sink into your chair with that fatalistic thought and hope you'll come out of the cinema hall relatively unscathed (ie, minus a throbbing headache).
You stifle your yawns when Karan (Amit) and Priya's (Sharbani Mukherji) campus romance blooms against the backdrop of Johnny Lever's asinine humour.
Then you are told that Karan's father (Dharmendra) is a thief who robs the rich to help the poor (this time you've got to yawn!). He's been disowned by his wife (Farida Jalal) several years ago, but the son finds nothing wrong with his father's choice of profession and decides to follow in his footsteps.
Naturally, good guy that he is, Karan cannot tell Priya all about his nocturnal activities. The cops, meanwhile, are in hot pursuit of this unknown thief. But they are largely clueless and hence, in a wonderfully ludicrous scene, the commissioner of police goes to a shady wrestling ring to invite suspended CBI officer Arjun (Sunny Deol) to try and crack the case. So, while Arjun is making mincemeat of a deadly wrestler from Pakistan (but of course!) the commissioner begs and pleads for his help.
Arjun obliges and Karan lands up behind bars. There's a subplot about Priya's father (Alok Nath) paying a blackmailer (Shakti Kapoor) from time to time and his desperation to put an end to this situation.
With each successive reel, the story takes a new and bizarre twist, thereby keeping you guessing about what more to expect from director Anil Kumaar Sharma (who is not to be mistaken for the maker of Gadar and The Hero: Love Story Of A Spy).
Honestly, what can you say about the finer details of this cinematic blunder of Titanic proportions? Except perhaps, that Manoj Kumar's Jai Hind was worse.
Viju Sha's music is so mundane it has zero recall appeal. The screenplay echoes the same situations you get to watch in every other Hindi movie.
The performances are equally dull. Dharmendra seems to have dragged himself out of retirement only to help out old friend Hingorani. Ditto for Sunny Deol, who grins and bears the eminently forgettable role he has graciously consented to play.
Sharbani is, at best, a poor man's Rani Mukherji, but cannot match her cousin's spontaneity. Amit Hingorani is no better or worse than half a dozen star kids who are obviously clueless about the art of acting. Yet, if his father were an actor with some clout in the industry, he'd surely get a second or third chance.
But even if that happens, those films would have to be significantly better than Kaise Kahoon Ke... Pyaar Hai for him to make his mark.
