Koi… Mil Gaya (2003)

• Produced and directed by Rakesh Roshan
• Written by Robin Bhatt, Sachin Bhowmick, Honey Irani, and Rakesh Roshan
• Starring
  • Rekha
  • Hrithik Roshan
  • Preity Zinta
  • Rajat Bedi
  • Mukesh Rishi

Like most of the Bollywood films which rely heavily on Hollywood for their inspiration, Koi… Mil Gaya displays its borrowings not brazenly but certainly unrepentantly. The main storyline is a combination of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) with Charly (1968), but along the way there are fairly deliberate echoes of Sam Raimi’s first two Spider-Man films and even a little bit of The Absent-Minded Professor (1961). What’s notable is not the degree of borrowing, but how well it all seems to hold together.

I compare that to Mr. India (1987), which was at least at the time my friend Chris’ favorite Bollywood movie. It seemed to me like Mr. India couldn’t decide if it were a slapstick sci-fi comedy, a Euro-Spy-style spoof, a serious look at the plight of the Indian poor, or something else entirely, and the changes in temperament between the disparate parts were jarring to my westernized sensibilities. Koi… Mil Gaya doesn’t have that problem; it’s long and a little unfocused, but there’s never a point that makes you feel like you must have left to go to the bathroom and came back to find another movie playing entirely. Plus the dancing scenes are fun, and the female lead is both pretty and cute. What more could anyone ask?

For me, the only real false steps in this movie come in the beginning. Scientist Sanjay Mehta (co-writer/producer/director Rakesh Roshan) spends his time in his home lab trying to contact alien intelligences by beaming musical “sound signals” into space. He starts getting responses that repeat his own musical phrases; he tries to tell the other scientists he works with, but they ridicule him and pooh-pooh his results. (Probably because they’ve heard of the speed of light, which should put at least a little lag between Sanjay’s signals and the alien responses.) But as he’s driving back from his meeting with them, talking with his wife Sonia (Rekha) about geniuses never being appreciated in their own time – a beam of light shoots down from the night sky! The aliens have arrived, and they’ve found Sanjay even without his musical gizmos! Unfortunately, there’s a downside to dropping in unannounced. Sanjay, startled, yanks the wheel and flips the car off the road; Sonia is thrown free, but Sanjay dies as the car goes up in flames. And I can just imagine the aliens standing silent for a moment, saying, “Um, whoops,” and then tiptoeing back out of the solar system before anyone knows they were here.

My question is, Where did they find a school uniform in his size?

Oh, but this is only the beginning of hardships. Sonia had been pregnant, and when her son Rohit (Hrithik Roshan – yes, the director’s son) arrives, he’s got developmental problems from prenatal injuries. His body will grow, but his brain will stay that of a child’s.

So it is that Rohit is a bespectacled twentysomething in a school uniform, playing with children half his age, and only getting put forward in school because his mother pleads with the principal.

And now, let’s meet the other two sides of the love triangle. Raj (Rajat Bedi) is the grown son of the local magistrate. He’s handsome, he’s good at basketball, and he and his motorcycle-riding buddies are used to getting their way. He’s got it in for Rohit because the latter and his scooter-riding friends wouldn’t give way on a narrow bridge for Raj’s friends’ motorcycles.

And finally, there’s Nisha (Preity Zinta), daughter of a friend of the magistrate who’s come back to town with his family after an extended absence. Raj and Nisha remember each other as kids, and Raj has definite designs on her. He adopts her into his circle of friends, and she also she takes his attitude toward Rohit as well at first. (Rohit didn’t help himself any on first meeting; he and his friends trick Nisha into giving them a ride to the movie house on the pretext of giving her directions to the magistrate’s house.) But after Raj and his cronies torment Rohit and break his scooter for “bothering” Nisha, Sonia gives the whole pack of ne’er-do-wells a piece of her mind about picking on the brain-damaged, and Nisha buys Rohit a bicycle in penance. Through that, and through a couple of musical numbers, they become fast friends. And maybe, according to Rohit’s bratpack, something more. They walk around town and have lunch together, and even start noodling around with Rohit’s dad’s old computer in storage, the one from which he contacted the aliens. They unwittingly send the signals off into space again…

Ragin’ Raj. (Sorry, it’s the best I could come up with.)

…And a UFO shows up! A huge one, covering the small town, and landing in the hills beyond. By the time officials get there the next day, there are only burn marks to show where the massive flying saucer touched down. But the police chief Inspector Khan (Mukesh Rishi) makes a startling discovery: several sets of footprints lead from the landing spot, but one set never came back. An alien was left behind!

Rohit’s mother tries to keep him away from the UFO furor that sweeps the town, but even so, Rohit sees something weird in his back yard, and he and Nisha start exploring the forest. And what do you know – they find the missing alien! A short, benign, magically-powered alien, so magical they name him “Jadoo” (Hindi for “magic”). I know that that description sounds a lot like E.T., but believe me, Jadoo is very different from E.T. For one thing, Jadoo wears clothes. For another, when he uses his magical alien powers to heal someone or suspend baseballs telekinetically, it’s his head that glows, not his heart. See? Entirely unalike.

But Raj wouldn’t be a good Alpha Male if he let the town pariah horn in on his would-be girlfriend, so he and his friends teach Rohit a lesson (a lesson in basketball, actually) and make sure he understands that this is about Nisha. Then Raj goes behind Nisha’s back to announce that he and Nisha are going to get married. Rohit is heartbroken, and asks his mother why he’s not like other boys his age. She finally tells him about the car accident caused by seeing the UFO, which caused his father’s death and his brain damage. And hidden in a basket nearby, Jadoo hears everything. The next morning, before Rohit wakes up, Jadoo shows up in his bedroom and strokes his head with a glowing hand…

The changes are incremental. First, Rohit realizes that he doesn’t need his glasses anymore. Then at school, with the computer science instructor who constantly belittles Rohit in a manner that would get him canned in the U.S., Rohit first demonstrates complete mastery of the Windows operating system and then gives him a dressing-down speech about discouraging the students under his charge. To demonstrate to Nisha that he’s capable of being a grown-up husband for her, he enters and wins a dance contest at the local club. And finally he challenges Raj and his cronies to a basketball match for the Hero Cup.

How do you say “Hubba” in Hindi?

The basketball match is where we first find out about Jadoo’s one weakness: he feeds on sunlight, and can only work his magic when he’s charged up. Rohit’s five-man team is filled out with four of his half-pint friends, and he does well himself until Raj’s team realizes that he’s their powerhouse, and spend all their energy surrounding him. The plan had been for Jadoo to help the other team members jump impossible distances, but the sky over the open-air court is cloudy, and by halftime Raj’s team is forty-something points ahead. (Jadoo is hiding in a gymbag on the side, watching through cut-out holes.) It’s only after a frantic prayer to Lord Krishna that the cloud cover opens up, and Rohit’s team surges ahead by bouncing all over the court like grasshoppers.

But while Jadoo has been transforming Rohit’s life, darker forces are at work. Inspector Khan has been tracking that errant pair of alien footprints, and is getting closer and closer to discovering him with Rohit. The only way to keep Jadoo safe is to summon the alien spaceship again and send him home. But if Jadoo leaves, all of the effects of his powers will cease – and Rohit will go back to being as he was, a child in a man’s body.

And that’s the meaty stuff of drama, you say, but what really matters is this, Nathan: What about the musical numbers? This is a Bollywood movie, after all. Well, there’s one near the beginning when Rohit answers a question right at school, and afterward he and all his friends on their scooters sing about flying like a bird. There’s a number with Rohit and Nisha called “Koi… Mil Gaya” (which translates as “I’ve Found… Someone”) after they start playing around with Dad’s old computer. After the discovery of Jadoo’s magical powers, Rohit, Nisha and the kids do a number called, appropriately, “Jadoo.” Rohit’s got a dance number in the club. And when, after the basketball game, Rohit asks Nisha’s father for her hand in marriage, well, you just gotta have a song-and-dance for that! All the dance numbers except the one in the club were actually shot in Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada, and the backdrop certainly bumps them up a notch. And the second, third, and fourth songs are all catchy, even to listeners (like me) who don’t speak Hindi. (Although it will take all of your power of Keatsian negative capability to ignore the fact that Nisha’s singing voice, provided be another performer as is standard in Bollywood, is a full octave higher than Preity Zinta’s husky contralto.)

No nostrils? But how does he smell? (You know your line.)

By far, the standout is the number in the dance contest in the club. It was in fact my first exposure to this movie; years ago, Chris sent my family a videotape compilation (which tells you how long ago it was) of fun and/or crazy Bollywood numbers. This number, which we dubbed “the Vibe song,” was the clear favorite in our household. It’s so much fun that I’m going to do something I’ve never done before in a review: I’m going to include the YouTube video, since it’s almost impossible to understand the appeal of this movie without watching it. Warning: It’s the catchiest tune ever, and will stick in your head for days and days.

I’ve mentioned the false step at the beginning of the movie; I would be guilty of critical malpractice if I did not mention a false step at the very end, which qualifies as a spoiler and thus merits the following precautions. At the very end, after an E.T.-like chase, Rohit returns Jadoo to his spaceship, and as it leaves, his vision blurs; all of his Jadoo-granted abilities are indeed fading. After he’s questioned and released by the police and feted by his village for his display of humanity to a visitor from another planet, he’s plain old Rohit again, hesitant to press his claim for Nisha even though she reassures him that her love is still strong. He’s confronted a final time by Raj and his posse, and in a fit of anger because Raj insults Nisha, he kicks a basketball at him and knocks him dozens of feet through the air. His vision clears; Jadoo has given his powers back to him, and Rohit and Nisha smile at a sparkling light in the sky as the credits roll.

This is, frankly, a cop out. Aside from contradicting or nullifying the idea that Jadoo’s power would only last as long as he was here, it also deprives Rojit of a “George McFly” moment, when the strength of his character, even without Jadoo’s healing influence, allows him to stand up and best Raj. Instead of a message that the righteous are favored by the gods, as mentioned earlier, this happy-at-all-costs ending gives the message that you’re never really someone unless a space alien is propping you up.

And now, allow me to make some general and unsupportable comments. (Allow me? Heck, it’s my website – try to stop me!) Koi… Mil Gaya is a good example of why Bollywood productions are gaining a fandom the world over: It’s fun. And not just fun in the way we’ve come to expect from tentpole blockbusters with explosions and flatulence jokes and callbacks to entertainment franchises from our formative youths. It’s joyful. It’s exuberant. There’s so much energy and sheer delight in performance on display in Koi.. Mil Gaya that watching it after a diet of American movie fare is like a lick of sugary frosting after a months-long diet of aspartame-laden sweets.

Jeez! Don’t the stars’ wardrobe people ever communicate?

(And did I mention that Preity Zinta is both hot and cute? Perversely, the Hollywood Image Police would try to convince both her and us that she needs to lose twenty pounds, but these are the same people who think that a woman can only be considered beautiful if she has zero percent body fat and displays muscle striations delineated like something drawn by Burne Hogarth. It would be as much a crime against nature to force Marilyn Monroe to slim down sufficiently to wear Calista Flockheart’s wardrobe.)

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 1
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 8
• dream sequences: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 3
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0