| | 4 | 1990 172’ col/scope Hindi d Indra Kumar pc Vinod Doshi, Maruti Int. s Rajiv Kaul, Praful Parekh dial Kamlesh Pandey lyr Sameer c Baba Azmi m Anand- Milind lp Aamir Khan, Madhuri Dixit, Saeed Jaffrey, Anupam Kher, Deven Verma |
| | 7 | The top Hindi hit of 1990 reprises the classic dilemmas of Aamir Khan’s earlier Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988): a love story leading to the estrangement between the families of a loving couple, thus gradually replacing the problems of individual romance with those of interfamilial relationships. Hero Raja (Khan) has a miserly father Hazari Prasad (Kher) who plans to increase his wealth by persuading the millionaire Mehra (Jaffrey) to allow his daughter Madhu (Dixit) to marry Raja. Madhu and Raja are in love anyway and indulge in high-school squabbles, a popular plot motif since Grease (1978). The marriage plans come unstuck when Mehra discovers that Hazari Prasad is not the industrialist he claims to be, but the young lovers defy their respective families and marry anyway. Raja becomes a labourer and has a major accident, allowing the two rich fathers to make their peace with each other. The ending replays the end of Guru Dutt’s Mr And Mrs ’55 (1955) at the airport. One of the many disco numbers, Ladki hai ya chhadi hai, is a version of Elvis Presley’s Blue Suede Shoes, while another adapted Ilaiyaraja’s O Priya Priya number from Geetanjali (1989). Like Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), the film deploys an advertising film style, esp. for the soundtrack and the editing, several sequences winding up with a direct address to the audience. Following the success of his next film, Beta (1992), Indra Kumar became the top-grossing director of 90s Hindi cinema. |