His Face is His Enemy

The WTF-ery of Kaho Naa ... Pyaar Hai (2000) is subtler than the other Rakesh Rohan movies I've seen, but the story is still all over the place. There's a nice orphan boy who wants to be a singing star. He meets a pretty rich girl, and they go on a cruise. They get shipwrecked on a desert isle. After they're rescued, her father vows to destroy his life. All her friends plot to help him become a huge pop star, so he can prove himself worthy. This plan actually works, but then he sees his old boss from the car dealership blow away the Police Commissioner in an underground garage. So he gets killed, and his grieving girlfriend goes to New Zealand, where she meets an exact lookalike of her dead lover, who falls in love with her at first sight.

Scene for scene, a person could mistake this for a normal movie (something unsayable about Koyla or Khoon Bhari Maang). But when it's all put together, it's still pretty insane. And of course, I have now finally seen Hrithik flex his muscles in that black mesh shirt, snippets of which I've seen in a million ad montages since my obsession with Hindi films began. Not that it was particularly life-changing -- for me, anyway. If I hadn't known, I wouldn't have guessed it was history in the making. But that's the way these things sometimes go...