Kuch Kuch Hota Hai


Kuch Kuch Hota Hai also known as KKHH, is a 1998 Indian Hindi-language romantic drama film, written and directed by Karan Johar. It features the popular on-screen pair of Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol in their fourth film together. Rani Mukerji and Salman Khan featured in a supporting roles. Sana Saeed, who featured in a supporting role, made her debut in this film. The plot combines two love triangles set years apart. The first half covers friends on a college campus, while the second tells the story of a widower's young daughter who tries to reunite her dad with his old friend.
Filmed in India, Mauritius, and Scotland, this was Johar's directorial debut. One of his goals for the film was to set a new level for style in Hindi cinema. The music was composed by Jatin-Lalit, was the biggest seller of the year. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was released on 16 October 1998, in India and United Kingdom and received a positive reception, with praise for Kajol's performance. The film was successful in India and abroad, becoming the highest-grossing Indian film of the year and the third highest-grossing Indian film at that time. Outside India, the film was the highest grossing Hindi film ever until its record was broken by Karan's next directorial, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham....
The film received numerous accolades, including the National Film Award for Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment and awards in the "Best Film" category at the Filmfare Awards, Zee Cine Awards, Screen Awards, and Bollywood Movie Awards. The film won 8 Filmfare Awards and was the only film to win all four acting awards until Gully Boy.

Plot

Rahul Khanna loses his wife, Tina Khanna, after she gives birth to their daughter, Anjali Khanna. He raises Anjali as a single father, with the help of his mother. Anjali grows up treasuring the letters her mother wrote before she died for her to receive on her first eight birthdays. On her eighth birthday, Anjali reads the last and most important letter that her mother left her; it tells the story of Rahul, Tina, and Anjali Sharma.
The film then flashes back to St. Xavier's College, where Rahul is best friends with tomboy Anjali Sharma. Tina, the rich and attractive daughter of college principal Mr. Malhotra, arrives at St. Xavier's and becomes friends with Rahul and Anjali. Rahul constantly flirts with Tina, trying to win her over. Later, they fall in love. After Rahul states that "love is friendship," Anjali slowly starts to realize that she is in love with Rahul. However, when she decides to confess her feelings, Rahul instead reveals that he is in love with Tina. Devastated, Anjali decides to leave college and shares a tearful goodbye with Rahul.
Back in the present, Tina explains in her letter that she realized she might've stopped Rahul and Anjali Sharma from falling in love. Now that Rahul is alone, Tina asks her daughter to reunite Rahul and Anjali and bring back Rahul's lost love and friend to him. Anjali enlists both her grandparents' help to try to fulfill this task.
Anjali Sharma, in the present, has become a beautiful woman and is now engaged to Aman Mehra, but the loss of Rahul remains with her. Determined to reunite her father and his best friend, Anjali Khanna and her grandmother head to a summer camp in Shimla, against Rahul's wishes, where Anjali Sharma is a student counsellor. Anjali Khanna meets Anjali Sharma, and the two become friends. Rahul is tricked by his daughter into coming to the camp, where he reunites with Anjali Sharma. Spending time together, Rahul and Anjali fall in love with each other. When Aman arrives at the camp, and Rahul learns he is Anjali's fiancé, Rahul is heartbroken, but congratulates Anjali. Anjali takes this as Rahul rejecting her again, so she leaves the summer camp and decides to marry Aman as soon as possible.
Rahul and his family go to Anjali's wedding, where Rahul silently confesses his love to Anjali and watches in tears as she is brought forth for the wedding. Knowing of Rahul's feelings, Anjali is hesitant to go through with the marriage, and sobs on her way to the mandapam. Aman realizes that she has always been in love with Rahul, and he releases Anjali from their engagement. Rahul and Anjali share an emotional reunion and get married. The film ends with Anjali Khanna seeing her mother Tina's soul praising her by giving her a thumbs up.

Cast

Story

After the experience of assisting and acting in Aditya Chopra's directorial debut, the romance film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Karan Johar was encouraged to try his own hand at directing. With Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, he chose to pair up the same lead actors, Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol, for his own romance film. They were signed by producer and his father Yash Johar in early 1997. During the filming of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Khan had also encouraged Johar to make his own film, and said that he would be willing to star in it.
Johar first wrote a story, which was a love triangle between a tomboy, a very pretty girl and a slightly insensitive boy, but he shelved the idea because he was not very satisfied with it. Then he wrote another plot about a widower and his child, which he shelved as well. Eventually he decided to merge the two stories into one. He explained in an interview with Rediff.com: "It was about the trauma of a widower and his little child. How the child really wants a mother and how she brings her mother into her father's life. Then I thought: Why not bring a youth aspect to the story? Why not a flashback? That's how the story got made." The story also includes a "personal desires vs. parental loyalties" theme, and has some "East meets West" themes, but instead of the characters going abroad, it creates a virtual West inside India.

Development

Karan Johar was certain from the beginning that he wanted to cast Shah Rukh Khan in the lead role, having observed him during the making of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. It took longer to fill the role of Tina. The role was written with Twinkle Khanna in mind, but she turned it down. Other actresses such as Tabu, Shilpa Shetty, Urmila Matondkar, Aishwarya Rai, Raveena Tandon and Karisma Kapoor were offered the role but also turned it down. Aditya Chopra and Shah Rukh Khan noticed Rani Mukerji's beauty and acting talent in Raja Ki Aayegi Baraat, and suggested her to Karan Johar. He thus signed her, giving a boost to her career. Saif Ali Khan, Ajay Devgn, Mukul Dev, and Chandrachur Singh were initially offered the role of Aman, but they all turned it down, thus prompting Johar to rope in Salman Khan.
Johar, who is also a costume designer, wanted to set a new level for style in Hindi cinema with this film. He and his friend Manish Malhotra, the film's costume designer, made trips to London for costumes, much to the chagrin of his father and producer Yash Johar, who was concerned about the budget. Many of the costumes in the film prominently displayed logos from designers such as DKNY and Polo. In addition to the designer fashions, Johar also created a somewhat fantastical world where the students speak Hinglish and enjoy a pristine college campus, where there is no crime or hate, and traditional Hindu values are pervasive. Johar admitted that the look and feel of the college scenes in the film were patterned after Beverly Hills 90210, saying, "The art, the costumes, tilt toward the West, but the soul of the film is Indian." He hired Sharmishta Roy as art director, and told her to produce something similar to Riverdale High School of the Archie Comics, with some 90210 influence as well. Johar said of the outcome, "If you see KKHH, Shahrukh plays Archie, Rani Mukherji plays Veronica, and Kajol played Betty. It was exactly that. And the principal looked like Weatherbee, and Ms. Grundy was Archana Puran Singh." Johar also hired Farah Khan to do the choreography, Jatin-Lalit to provide the music, Santosh Thundiyil as cinematographer, and Nikhil Advani as his associate director. Shabina Khan assisted Manish Malhotra with costume design.

Filming

Filming began on 21 October 1997. The crew was young and inexperienced to the point where Shah Rukh Khan had to explain basic technicalities of filming. Khan later said, "Karan makes no bones of the fact that his technical knowledge of filmmaking was not at its peak when he made the biggest hit of the decade." The entire film was shot in nine and half months with a substantial part of it shot in Mauritius. The title song was filmed over a ten-day period. in several picturesque locations in Scotland, including Eilean Donan, Glen Coe, Loch Lomond and Tantallon Castle with the nearby Bass Rock as a backdrop in one scene. The scenes from the summer camp in Shimla were filmed at Wenlock Downs in Ooty, Tamil Nadu.
During the bicycle sequence in the "Yeh Ladka Hai Deewana" song, Kajol lost control of her bike, fell flat on her face, and was knocked unconscious while also injuring her knee. During the promotional Making of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai TV special, Kajol stated that the accident was her most memorable part of shooting the film because she doesn't remember it. During preparation for the reunion scene where the two leads met after more than 8 years apart, the director told them to improvise and rehearse the reactions that they might use, but he secretly taped them, and was so pleased with the result that it was put into the film.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack for Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was composed by Jatin-Lalit and the lyrics were penned by Sameer. This is the first collaboration of the duo with Karan Johar. It was released by the Sony Music label on 12 September 1998. Mukul Deshpande of Planet Bollywood rated the soundtrack 8.5 out of 10 stars although he did not like all of the songs. The album became the best selling Bollywood soundtrack of the year. The title song remained on the Indian music charts for over a year, and the album peaked at number #2 on the Malaysian albums chart in 1999. In 2012 it was voted as the most popular film song of the previous decade by NDTV. The full soundtrack came in second place in a similar poll conducted by the BBC, the first place being taken by Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, an album which was also composed by Jatin-Lalit.
While the film was still untitled, Javed Akhtar was signed to write the lyrics, and even wrote and recorded one song. However, when the movie was titled Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, he found the title mediocre, obscene, and vulgar and decided to quit the project. Akhtar later regretted leaving the film, as he found it decent and could see that the title has become quite a buzz-word, realizing that he was the only one who disliked the title.

Release and reception

Critical reception

While comparing the film to Dil To Pagal Hai of 1997, Nikhat Kazmi of The Times of India gave Kuch Kuch Hota Hai 3.5 out of 5 stars. She especially liked the performance of Kajol, and thought that the film would appeal to young and romantic viewers primarily for its "MTV ambiance" and "Valentine Day flavours". On the negative side, she said "The second half, however, gets drowned in a sea of emotions. Too many people begin to cry a bit too much." Anish Khanna of Planet Bollywood rated the film 9.5 out of 10 stars, calling it "pure escapist cinema at its best." He praised the cinematography, choreography, set decoration, and also raved over Kajol's performance, along with her onscreen chemistry with Shah Rukh Khan. Overall, he said, "Karan Johar makes an impressive directorial debut, has a good script sense, and knows how to make a film with S-T-Y-L-E." In contrast to these views, the reaction of Sujata C J, writing for Rediff.com, was that the film was very disappointing, with many cliches and a bad story line, though Santosh Thundiyil and Sharmishta Roy were praised for their camerawork and art direction, respectively. Nandita Chowdhury in a review for India Today, said that Karan Johar was almost able to rekindle the Khan-Kajol magic of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, and that overall the film was "a good distraction".

Box office

There were great expectations for Kuch Kuch Hota Hai leading up to its premiere, because it re-united the Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge team of Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol, and specifically concerning the debut of Karan Johar, whether he would be in the same league as Aditya Chopra as a first-time writer/director.
The film grossed in India and $6.3 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of, against its budget, and became the third film to gross over worldwide after Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. It had a worldwide opening weekend of, and grossed in its first week. It is the highest-grossing Bollywood film of 1998 worldwide. It also became the third highest grossing Indian film then, behind Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge.

India

It opened on Friday, 16 October 1998, across 240 screens, along with Bade Miyan Chote Miyan and earned nett on its opening day. It grossed nett in its opening weekend, and went on to record the second highest first week of the year with collections around nett after Bade Miyan Chote Miyan which grossed nett. The film earned a total of nett, plus a distributor share of, and was declared an "All Time Blockbuster" by Box Office India. It is the highest-grossing film of 1998 in India.

Overseas

It had an opening weekend of $800,000 and went on to gross $1.3 million in its first week. It became the first film to cross $5 million mark outside India, and became the highest grosser at that time. The film earned a total of $6.3 million at the end of its theatrical run. It became the second Bollywood film to break into the UK cinema top 10 after Dil Se.. which released the same year. It was a bigger box office success than Titanic when it was screened in Indonesia. Overseas, It is the highest-grossing film of 1998.

Accolades

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai won many awards, including sweeping all the major categories at the year's Filmfare Awards, held on 21 February 1999. It was the third film to win the four major awards at Filmfare. Others include Guide, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge , Devdas, Black and Gully Boy.
AwardCategoryRecipientResults
46th National Film AwardsBest Film For Providing Wholesome EntertainmentYash Johar
Karan Johar		rowspan="34"
46th National Film AwardsBest Female Playback SingerAlka Yagnik - "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai"-
44th Filmfare AwardsBest FilmYash Johar-
44th Filmfare AwardsBest DirectorKaran Johar-
44th Filmfare AwardsBest ActorShahrukh Khan-
44th Filmfare AwardsBest ActressKajol-
44th Filmfare AwardsBest Supporting ActorSalman Khan-
44th Filmfare AwardsBest Supporting ActressRani Mukerji-
44th Filmfare AwardsBest Art DirectionSharmishta Roy-
44th Filmfare AwardsBest ScreenplayKaran Johar-
Star Screen AwardsBest FilmYash Johar-
Star Screen AwardsBest DirectorKaran Johar-
Star Screen AwardsBest Music DirectorJatin Lalit-
Star Screen AwardsBest ComedianArchana Puran Singh-
Zee Cine AwardsBest FilmYash Johar-
Zee Cine AwardsBest DirectorKaran Johar-
Zee Cine AwardsBest Actor – MaleShahrukh Khan-
Zee Cine AwardsBest Actor – FemaleKajol-
Zee Cine AwardsBest Actor in a Supporting Role – FemaleRani Mukerji-
Zee Cine AwardsBest Music DirectorJatin Lalit-
Zee Cine AwardsBest Playback Singer – FemaleAlka Yagnik - "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai"-
Zee Cine AwardsBest LyricistSameer - "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai"-
Zee Cine AwardsBest StoryKaran Johar-
Zee Cine AwardsLux Face of the YearRani Mukerji -
Bollywood Movie AwardsBest FilmYash Johar-
Bollywood Movie AwardsBest DirectorKaran Johar-
Bollywood Movie AwardsBest ActorShahrukh Khan-
Bollywood Movie AwardsBest ActressKajol-
Bollywood Movie AwardsBest Music DirectorJatin Lalit-
Bollywood Movie AwardsBest Playback Singer MaleUdit Narayan – "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai"-
Bollywood Movie AwardsBest Playback Singer FemaleAlka Yagnik – "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai"-
Bollywood Movie AwardsBest Costume DesignerManish Malhotra-
Bollywood Movie AwardsBest ChoreographyFarah Khan-
Bollywood Movie AwardsBest ScreenplayKaran Johar-

Other media

A few years after its release, Sony purchased satellite rights for the film for. The film was also released on VHS, DVD, and eventually Blu-ray. Now Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, along with Johar's second film Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham..., often play on television to consistently high ratings. Johar said, "It's gratifying to know that they've aged well and passed the test of time."

Post-release

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was the subject of reviews and critical analysis following its initial release. Subhash K Jha called the film "a simple stylish, sensuous and ambrosial love story," further adding that the chemistry between the lead pair was unbeatable. A reviewer for Timeout Film Guide, while commenting that the second love triangle went on too long, liked most of the film, saying that "its performances, camerawork, storytelling and extensive musical numbers all energetically colourful." In 2004, Meor Shariman of The Malay Mail called the film a "must watch" for Bollywood fans, and also for those seeking an introduction to Bollywood. The film has also been criticized for creating unreal worlds and characters, to which Johar has said that this was part of his vision of escapism.

Impact

One of the best examples of the iconic status of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was the 2012 film Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi. Farah Khan and Boman Irani re-created scenes and characters from KKHH for posters to promote their film, and also paid homage in one of the songs, "Ramba Mein Samba". In 2010, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was selected by Time as one of their "Five Essential Bollywood movies to Netflix".
In 2018, Karan Johar celebrated the 20-year anniversary of this iconic film by hosting memorable events with Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol and Rani Mukherji.

Remake

Koochie Koochie Hota Hai is an animated remake of the original, directed by Tarun Mansukhani. Shahrukh Khan, Kajol, Rani Mukerji, Anupam Kher are reprising their roles as Rahul aka Rocky, Anjali aka Angie, Tina, and the Principal. New cast members include Uday Chopra, Ritesh Deshmukh, Sanjay Dutt and Simi Garewal. The story will have an anthropomorphic animal cast. As of October 2012, Karan Johar has placed the project on permanent hold. He said, "Animation films are not working nowadays, so as of now I have kept it on stand-by."