Hum Tum

Karan and Rhea meet on a plane. He draws comics and does not stop talking; she finds him unpleasant within five minutes. The journey ends badly. Years later they meet again in Amsterdam, then in Delhi, then at a wedding. At each meeting their lives are somewhere else: one marries, one loses someone, one begins again. What is between them gets a different name each time. Kunal Kohli directs. Saif Ali Khan plays Karan and Rani Mukerji plays Rhea; the cast also includes Kirron Kher, Rishi Kapoor and Rati Agnihotri. What the film is known for is its use of animation: the two characters Karan draws, Hum and Tum, come alive between sections and comment on the story. That was not a common choice in Indian cinema at the time. The narrative proceeds in a structure divided by years, each section given to one meeting. The matter it works at is the border between friendship and love, and the narrative does not build it on the assumption that the two cannot exist at once. Saif Ali Khan won a national award for the part and his career changed after the film. The strand about the widowed woman is unusually direct for mainstream Indian cinema of those years. Who it is for: viewers who like romantic comedy and the fit between these two actors. Who it is not for: the running time is long, the middle repeats, and some of the jokes have dated.