Movie Review of Mujhse Dosti Karoge (2002)

Mujhse dosti karoge starring Hrithik Roshan as Raj,Kareena kapoor as Tina and Rani Mukherjee as Pooja comes from the house of Yash Raj movies directed by Kunal Kohli (a film critic turned film director).This movie starts with three child stars playing the roles of Raj,Tina and Pooja and their friendship set at the backdrop of Simla. Apparantly they are good friends but Raj even in his childhood has a decided partiality towards Tina and Pooja has a decided partiality towards Raj. This as you can guess is the setting the background for what is going to cause a lot of heartache among the three of them.Raj wishes to keep in touch with Tina when he moves to London with his family and Pooja offers her computer as a means to help them out. When the first email arrives,Tina has no interest in keeping in touch with Raj and so Pooja starts sending Raj emails in Tina's name and their friendship grows through the years.

When Raj returns back to India he continues his interest in Tina under the impression that it was Tina herself that wrote him all those the emails.Now Tina also seems to return his interest and both of them flirt and sing songs and seem well on their way to finding love in true filmi style.Pooja decides to step aside and let her friends be happy.Their parents also think that it is a good idea to get Raj and Tina married and everything seems to proceed smoothly in the path of "true" love.

Around the middle of the movie when Pooja visits London and Raj takes her around he realizes that Pooja was the one who wrote him all the emails.He promptly professes his love to Pooja and tells her that she is the one he wants to really marry. She first resists and then agrees and they decide to tell their parents and Tina back in India that they both love each other. When they return they find that Tina's father has passed on in the intervening time and Tina is now alone without either of her parents.

Guilty about upsetting her further both Raj and Pooja allow the status quo to continue and Tina continues to believe that Raj loves her.Pooja now wants Raj to marry Tina even though he does not love her for the sake of friendship.Raj disagrees and says he would marry Tina if Pooja marries someone else. How the three of them resolve their feelings and the solution to this triangle forms the rest of the movie.

The first half an hour of the movie is one of the cheesiest scenes in recent movies and quite difficult to watch.The scenes between the three young child stars seems very contrived and quite unbelievable even by hindi movie standards.Really which pre-teen kids hang around each other with lovestruck expressions on their faces.

Anyway once past the first half an hour you find the movie moves into what can be classified as a regular hindi movie triangle with Raj and Tina flirting and smiling with each other and Pooja hanging around wearing her heart on her sleeve which surprisingly no one else seems to notice.

The other cheesy thing about this movie is the dialogue "Mujhse dosti karoge" which gets repeated throughout the movie at the oddest of points in the movie.Rani Mukherjee shines in her role and easily has the most to do in the film in comparison to the others. Hrithik roshan does his job well. If you can ignore the overacting by Kareena kapoor who pouts,wrinkles her nose,rolls her eyes and generally over does almost every expression beyond necessity and the cheesiness of some of the sequences mentioned above this movie is okay for one watch.

Maybe more than one if you are especially fond of the rest of the star cast but in no way can this movie be categorized as memorable. The locales and the backdrop of the entire movie is beautiful.Like other Yash Raj movies this movie too has ultra rich people who fly back and forth from London to India,have swimming pools in their homes and who even sleep in designer clothing, in short a dream world.

Rating
3/5