Dil hai betaab (1993)

Dil hai betaab stars a very young Ajay Devgan, He plays one (Ajay) of three men interested in the same girl, Meena. He was the first, and though her parents were not opposed to the match, her father's greed led him to agree to a marriage proposal with the son of a richer family, Raja (Vivke Mushram), with whom she falls in love. However, when an even richer, and very unpleasant young man, Vikram, played by Monesh Bhel shows interest in her, her father breaks the engagement so she can mary into an even richer family. To everybody's great surprise the young lovers aren't all that happy about this development and much fighting and pleading follows. The parents include all my favourites (Reema Lagoo, Anjana Mumtaz, Alok Nath and Kader Khan). Kader Khan plays the greedy father, and he does a very good job as you never lose sympathy for him completely although he makes some pretty disastrous decisions.

It is really not that bad a movie, just very predictable, and some things make even less sense than you would expect, like the very rich boys father dying sometime around the middle of the movie, but we are never told this, you have to deduce it from the garland now draped over his picture (and the fact that he is never seen again). It does not help that the guy playing Raja, the one which does all the running around trees and parasols, doesn't seem all that charismatic to me. There is one happy love song with Ajay and one drunk song featuring him (as it is de rigeur for a man unhappily in love to become completely plastered) and one of the strangest weddings I have seen so far, involving, as it does, a shooting halfway through the ceremony. Oh, and one of the minor characters gets a gratuitous speedo scene.

Very stylish opening credits:



I never thought I would call Ajay Devgan cute, but cute he is:


My advise, try and do something about the interior decoration:
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I am sorry, but no amount of soft focus will enable me to generate any interest in you:


Ooooh, symbolic handshakes:




More symbolism:



I think he might be unhappily in love:




The speedo scene (why, there really was no need):


and vintage lightning: