‘Yaadein’ is So Bad, It’s Good
Twenty-five years later, Bollywood’s most unhinged flop — and the first to pair Hrithik and Kareena — deserves another look.
It’s easy to forget that the first film to feature Hrithik Roshan and Kareena Kapoor wasn’t K3G. (And no, that one scene in Kaho Naa…Pyaar Hai doesn’t count.) Their pairing seemed cursed from the start; none of their films did well at the box office, except for one. Still, the duo gave us an endless supply of memes. Fans of a certain era can flawlessly quote lines and expressions from Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon, Mujhse Dosti Karoge, K3G, and Yaadein back at you. But it’s perhaps Yaadein — their first film together — which came out on July 27, 2001, that remains among their least watched, least analyzed, and, dare we say, most cringe.
We’re here to correct that wrong and explain why this “flop” film deserves your attention, and even adulation. Made on a roughly $4.5 million budget, it made only $7.4 million at the global box office. Interestingly, about $1 million of that was earned in the U.S., its top diaspora market. After all, the premise is simple. Two British Indian families live in London. One of them has a strong attachment to India. The other is a wealthy businessman, father to a son whose job is unclear. Throw in some great music, and you get something that smells like DDLJ, but is in a league of its own (both good and bad!).