‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai made no sense, Shah Rukh’s character lacked backbone’: as Karan Johar reviewed his film
Starring Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol and Rani Mukerji, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai has turned 22. Here’s how Karan Johar dissected his debut some time ago.
As Karan Johar’s debut film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai turns 22 today – the film starring Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol and Rani Mukerji was released on October 16, 1998 – there is an entire generation that considers it iconic. However, its director had criticized the film long ago, calling it the story of a “deeply confused character” played by SRK.
About Shah Rukh’s character, Karan had said in a 2019 interview, “Rahul doesn’t stand for much. He is a deeply confused character, he doesn’t know what he wants and he really didn’t do much in the film. What happened to him was because he was beset by other people – the ghost of his dead wife, his eight-year-old daughter, and Anjali herself. What made him endearing was his charm, his big heart and Shah Rukh’s personal charisma.”
He added that there was “no logic or backstory to the characters.” “You don’t know what Shah Rukh or anyone else is doing in the film. And the eight characters – one for each birthday – didn’t make sense either,” the director had said in an interview with Mid-Day.
At a 2018 event to celebrate Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’s 20th anniversary, Shah Rukh had described the film’s original story as “completely meaningless.” “Karan came and told me a completely nonsensical bullshit story, which is certainly not what you saw in the film at the end. In his own strange way, Karan, the man of many words, tried to impress me with his bullshit story. So yeah, I really didn’t understand the story when I signed on. And I’m glad I didn’t go along with the story and followed Karan’s conviction, otherwise the film wouldn’t have turned out the way it did,” he had said, comparing the first draft and the finished film.
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