Aapko Pahle Bhi Kahin Dekha Hai (2003)
Cast: Priyanshu, Sakshi Shivanand, Om Puri, Farida Jalal
Director: Anubhav Sinha
Music Director: Nikhil Vinay
Synopsis: disastrous misfire cant decide what it wants to be - a total wipeout!
Reviewed by: Faiz Khan

 

 

Sometimes you really do wonder why they bother.

More specifically...

why anyone bothers making films like Aapko Pehle Bhi Kahin Dekha Hai.

When the writers finally run out of original ideas, they apparently decide that borrowing a generous helping of Meet the Parents, sprinkling in a little crime, a touch of deceit, half a dozen songs and several buckets of sentiment ought to produce an engaging romantic comedy.

Instead, it produces a remarkably long journey to absolutely nowhere.

Samar (Priyanshu Chatterjee) arrives in Canada to stay with his friend Aziz Bhai. Officially, he is simply another young man starting afresh.

Unofficially, he is a suspended police officer.

His disgrace stems from the escape of a notorious criminal named Jojo, who fled while supposedly under Samar's custody. Naturally, everyone assumes Samar helped him escape, leaving our hero determined to clear his name before revealing the truth about himself.

So far...

not a bad premise.

Then comes the inevitable romance.

Samar encounters Pakhi (Sakshi Shivanand), who, in true Bollywood fashion, drops her shopping in the rain, scattering oranges dramatically across the pavement. Rather than collecting them, she stands transfixed as this impossibly handsome stranger gazes in her direction.

Naturally she is wearing white.

Naturally it is raining.

Naturally Jagjit Singh and Asha Bhosle begin serenading us from somewhere in the heavens.

There is simply no escaping love.

Pakhi's father (Om Puri) is absurdly devoted to his daughter, behaving as though allowing a twenty-year-old woman out of his sight for more than a fortnight would constitute an act of parental negligence.

The film then settles into an endless procession of father-daughter sentiment, awkward boyfriend introductions, misplaced comedy and enough songs to convince us that absolutely nothing else is going to happen.

Eventually everyone agrees that Samar is perfectly suitable marriage material.

Well...

almost everyone.

Pakhi's father briefly develops doubts after spotting the prospective son-in-law emerging from the ladies' toilet, but even this minor complication is quickly swept aside.

Just when one imagines the film may finally develop some dramatic momentum, Samar experiences a crisis of conscience.

He has been pretending to be a successful executive with Pepsi in India.

He isn't.

He is, in fact, a suspended policeman with a damaged reputation.

Determined to confess everything—but only after first capturing Jojo and clearing his name—our hero heads off into the wilderness armed with what appears to be a very small pistol and an extraordinarily optimistic attitude.

The resulting action scenes are unintentionally hilarious.

Watching Samar stalk through the woods with gun in hand resembles a bargain-basement version of James Bond.

007...

gone hideously wrong.

Despite helicopters, gunfire and much frantic running about, Jojo somehow remains conveniently uncaptured.

Samar returns to his own wedding looking dishevelled and thoroughly defeated before finally confessing the truth.

No Pepsi.

No successful businessman.

Just a suspended cop who lied.

Pakhi responds as though she has uncovered the crime of the century.

She rushes away in floods of tears.

Samar wanders off to brood in a conveniently empty car park while a mournful playback singer dutifully informs us how tragic everything has become.

Then...

as if by magic...

Jojo himself suddenly appears.

Everyone converges.

A few obligatory explosions later, the villain is arrested, Samar's honour is restored, the wedding proceeds and all is instantly forgiven.

Hurrah for happy endings.

The trouble with Aapko Pehle Bhi Kahin Dekha Hai is not that it is merely bad.

It is that it never seems remotely sure what kind of film it wants to be.

Is it a romantic comedy?

If so, it contains precious little comedy.

I cannot honestly remember laughing once.

Is it an action thriller?

Hardly.

Its attempts at suspense are so inept that they frequently become unintentionally amusing.

Is it a family drama?

Perhaps.

But every emotional scene feels manufactured rather than earned.

One particularly sentimental number, Baba Ki Rani Hoon, seems determined to reduce audiences to tears.

Unfortunately, the tears are more likely to stem from terminal boredom than emotional involvement.

The film lurches awkwardly between genres without ever mastering any of them.

Priyanshu Chatterjee makes a reasonable effort with a character who never really develops beyond being a rather bland hero caught in an equally bland screenplay. He dances competently enough and, somewhat distractingly, spends much of the film sporting lipstick so bright that it occasionally deserves a separate credit.

Sakshi Shivanand contributes little beyond looking attractive and reacting tearfully to events around her. It is difficult to imagine this performance launching any major career.

Om Puri's presence is perhaps the saddest aspect of the entire enterprise.

An actor of his immense calibre deserves material infinitely richer than this, and one cannot shake the feeling that he is fully aware of it.

The soundtrack offers one or two pleasant tunes, but even the songs eventually become a chore because they continually interrupt a narrative that was barely moving in the first place.

By the end, one is simply willing the whole thing to finish.

Aapko Pehle Bhi Kahin Dekha Hai is one of those painfully anonymous Bollywood productions that seems assembled from leftovers borrowed from half a dozen better films. Romance, comedy, action and family melodrama are all present, yet none of them works.

The result is an oddly lifeless film that leaves scarcely any impression beyond its astonishingly cumbersome title.

Which, fittingly enough...

is almost the best thing about it.