This is the first Bollywood film I'm giving my "5 out of 10" rating. I usually reserve that for "So bad it's good" films. Mujhe Kucch Kehna Hai is no exception. Although it's clearly a comedy at times, it's just as often funny when it's not supposed to be--both the comedy and the serious bits are frequently ridiculous. That makes it a lot of fun to watch, but it's not exactly a good film.
The plot, in a nutshell (a nutshell is really all there is to it), features Karan (Tusshar Kapoor) trying to find and court Pooja Saxena (Kareena Kapoor--she and Tusshar are not related as far as I know; they at least do not seem to be closely related). Karan happened to see Pooja from a distance and instantly fell in love with her. They keep having close encounters, but something always interrupts, and in a typical Bollywood move, Karan never musters the courage to initiate anything other than polite, casual conversation. Karan lives in a moderately sized Indian town. Pooja is from the States, visiting relatives to do research on "Indian culture", and trying to get accepted into Harvard. Karan is much less scholarly. He has a cadre of relatively goofy friends, they have a band, and we learn that he can fight unbelievably well.
The idea of the plot isn't horrible, even if it is simplistic. Mujhe Kucch Kehna Hai is basically a series of misadventures. The problems with the plot arise in the way director Satish Kaushik and writers Rumi Jaffrey and Karunakar handle it. For the first half-hour, they're basically just treading water. Kareena Kapoor doesn't appear until the 35-minute mark. We have a fifth of a typically overlong film just to introduce characters, in absence of any real story. Further, because of the simplicity and the necessity of increasing the severity of the misadventures, and also related to length, we have a film that peaks at least 40 minutes before it is over. Like too many Bollywood films, this story would have played much better if kept to 90 minutes. On the positive side, the ending is refreshingly unusual. Kaushik and crew avoid simply resorting to clichés.
But there are bigger problems with Mujhe Kucch Kehna Hai than the plot. Kareena Kapoor, although more than pleasant to look at, consistently comes across as if she thinks she's doing a shampoo commercial rather than a dramatic film. She constantly "glamour mugs" in an exaggerated way, and she's regularly flipping and bouncing her hair around (her first scene, where she's bouncing up and down and showing off her decorated hands, is particularly funny for its absurdity). This was one of her earlier films, so maybe the ridiculous and ill-suited overacting is more excusable, but that makes it no less unintentionally funny to watch. Admittedly, her acting has improved rapidly. She didn't seem so out of place in Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon (2003), although on the other hand, that film is absurdly cartoonish at times.
Tusshar Kapoor comes across as the better actor here, even though this was his first film. But as decent as he is, Kaushik and crew have him and the rest of the cast doing ridiculous things. The bits that are supposed to be comic--like Karan's daydreaming leading to him using his friend as a guitar--are okay for their ridiculousness. To be funny, there has to be something "out of place", roughly. But a number of scenes that are supposed to be climactically dramatic--such as an attempted rescue from a cliff, or Karan's proposed and actual birthday presents to Pooja, end up being just as funny.
Kaushik also stages a couple absurd fight scenes, with random "striking" sound effects that reminded me of the hilarious fight scenes in Mudda (2003). For my tastes, there was also an overabundance of songs, which featured way too much "look how young and hip we are" mugging, some very fake musicianship from our stars (doesn't any member of an Indian film crew know how to set up a drumset?), and some very "flamboyant" dancing and posing from some of the male back-up dancers. Of course, the typical travelogue cinematography accompanies most of the love songs. Much of the Mujhe Kucch Kehna Hai was filmed in New Zealand, and Kaushik does a good job of exploiting the setting, even if that means prominent appearances of businesses such as McDonald's and Burger King. No one involved with this film is reluctant to show their immersion in popular western youth culture, even though it usually comes across as more goofy (and occasionally behind the times--just check out the preppy shoulder sweater) than anything else. The first scene is in a disco, with a crowd dancing to "Who let the Dogs Out", before Balram Singh (Amrish Puri) begins his constant utterances of "very good, very very good", as he has a group of girls "rate" boys he parades across the stage. That gives you a good taste of what is in store for the length of the film.
If you do not speak Hindi, you're in for a bit of an extra challenge with Mujhe Kucch Kehna Hai, as much of the dialogue moves by very quickly, resulting in subtitles that disappear quicker than you can read them. There are more lines than usual that remain untranslated, and for some reason, they just didn't bother to translate the lyrics to the songs at all.
If you're in the mood for some silly humor, both intentional and unintentional, this is worth a watch. You'll laugh at the film as often as you laugh with it. Just don't use this film to introduce any of your friends to Bollywood.
