Review of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai / कुछ कुछ होता है

Back in January 2024, I had the trip of a lifetime going to visit my cousin. She lived in Malaysia with her husband and son at the time, and I had planned to come for months before deciding to impulsively buy the ticket and venture all the way to the other side of the world.

That said, my travel time from Washington DC to Kuala Lumpur was a grand total of over 25 hours going, and 40 hours coming home. One my very first leg of the journey, from Dulles to Abu Dhabi, I was pleasantly surprised at the options that Etihad had when it came to the movies and television shows.

And because I was in the food for some Bollywood, I decided to watch one of the many Indian movies the flight had to offer. I ended up landing on Kuch Kuch Hota Hai because it’s been on my list for a long time now, and a 14 hour flight seemed like the perfect place to start it with.

This is how I spent a solid three hours on the flight. I didn’t watch any other movies during this specific flight, but this certainly kept me going for a good bit.

Here’s my review!

A boy gets caught between two girls in his life.

Technically, our main protagonist in this movie is Rahul, who is the happy go-getter on his college campus. His best friend is Anjali, and these two fit together like puzzle pieces. They’re the ying to each other’s yang, but everything is about to change when Tina shows up to the school’s campus.

We weave between the past and the present these days, as Rahul’s daughter, now without a mother, tries to uncover what happened to her father’s relationships. She learns he had a woman named Anjali through her mother’s letters in his life, and she wants to find out the truth.

Tina is the daughter of the school’s principal, but as soon as Rahul sees her walking up on campus, he decides he’s fallen in love with her. He starts pursuing her, and when they do end up going out, this destroys Anjali—turns out she had a big crush on Rahul after all of these years.

Anjali makes the executive decision to leave the campus because of it, and despite Rahul and her’s closeness at the time of attending school together, they don’t really keep in touch. Rahul marries Tina, and they have kids together, leading to the scenes in the present day. Tina realizes she is not going to live through the pregnancy, and writes letters to her daughter to read when she’s born.

She requests her daughter be named Anjali, and Rahul becomes an active dad in her life. It’s on her eighth birthday she opened the letter describing the real Anjali, leading to her mission to try and get her father in touch with her. Rahul’s daughter tracks Anjali down to a summer camp, where she enrolls on a new mission.

Rahul doesn’t want her to go, but he doesn’t know why she’s going. He allows her, though, and Anjali meets his daughter, the two effectively becoming close over their time together. But when Rahul shows up at camp, he sees Anjali and is shocked to find a spark of romance in his feelings.

However, Anjali is due to be married to her own fiance. Anjali leaves the camp once she realizes she can’t pick between two men, and agrees to bump up her wedding. Rahul is devastated by this, but when his daughter and he go to visit Anjali right before the wedding, he confesses his true feelings.

Anjali’s fiance realizes what’s happening and calls off the wedding, as he knows Anjali wants Rahul. Then Rahul and Anjali get married instead, leading to major festivities after.

Overall Thoughts

This was such a nineties Bollywood movie, but Iw as here for it. So were the Indian couple sitting next to me that only spoke Hindi—they were entertained when they saw me, presumably a white girl in their eyes (spoiler: I’m Middle Eastern), watching an Indian movie. Little do they know that I could understand a chunk of their Hindi.

Anyways, I wasn’t in love with this movie, though. I’m finding that I’m much more plot driven, and while this has some of the biggest tropes in the book, I wanted more from it. It was certainly a lot of fun in the end—I will give it that.

That said, I don’t think I’ll be returning to this movie any time soon. It got a little painful towards the end to finish.

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