MUJHSE DOSTI KAROGE -
And once again after a decent gap of a couple of months we are taken back into the magical world of yash chopra movies.....the alps, the women in chiffon, the wonderful bonds of family and friendship and the same story repeated over and over again...
Mujhse Dosti Karoge tries to be different.....honestly it does. It focusses on the friendship and subsequent love triangle of three childhood pals.....Raj, Tina and Pooja. As one of them pithily puts it......pyar dosti hai....oh wait sorry that was dil to pagal hai. Moving on....so mdk has this cool triangle between the scantily clad - nisha, the chopra version of the bharatiya nari - pooja and the gap clad - rahul.....oops that was also dil to pagal hai but you get the drift. Since the plot is redundant let's talk exciting stuff like this wonderful pseudo antakshari routine between sridevi, anil kapoor and anupam kher......my bad that was lamhe. Okay song picturisations then.....shot beautifully atop snow-clad mountains ( like every yash chopra movie since 1988), around the red telephone boxes and escalators of london ( see ddlj and k3g for more details) and an exciting on stage number (see kkhh for a slight but better variation on the same). Since nothing else is particularly new.....let's talk climax which features this awesome concept of the big man on top......yes God himself dropping in to sort matters out.....and there's this cute family dog....no no that's hahk....ok well mdk climax is hahk without the dog. Well atleast kunal kohli moved on to steal ideas from another banner instead of sticking with yash raj traditions.
MDK is not a bad movie but it's a movie we've all seen over and over again in some form or the other. The fact that it liberally borrows ideas from other famous yash raj produced movies does not help since all of the other movies are close to classics with characters, songs and sequences that still resonate with movie-goers. Even the English original, The Truth about Cats and Dogs which itself is inspired from Cyrano de Bergerac was no Oscar contender....but it was a well made romantic comedy exuding warmth and goodness which is something one cannot say for MDK.
The story is nothing to write home about, neither are the songs, the direction, the cinematography or even the acting. Kareena plays a watered down version of Poo, Rani plays a longer version of the saintly but soon dead Tina and Hrithik, well he does what he's being paid pots of money to do - exude charisma, shake a shapely leg or two and twinkle at the ladies. The biggest pity is these are all actors who are capable of much more, yet they settle for poor copies of roles they themselves have played before. And that's perhaps is the final word on MDK itself. It's a poor copy of movies made before by the same production house and that's a huge pity because the banner itself is capable of so much more.
So do you watch it.......i wouldn't reccomend it.....go rent ddlj, kkhh, hahk even qsqt and mpk and see what romance is truly about.....why settle for a cheap copy when the original is just a movie rental away
