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Exactly 20 years ago, Bournvita, Nescafé and Hero Honda financed the best alien sci-fi Indian film ever produced. Koi… Mil Gaya (2003) was a watershed moment for the Indian blockbuster, combining the routine theatrics of a Bollywood potboiler with the exhilarating sophistication of spaceships. Hrithik Roshan, in a star-making role, essayed the character of Rohit Mehra, a young adult with an intellectual disability, who is brought to joy and embraces life with some help from an extraterrestrial friend. Though the film owes an undeniable cinematic debt to Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), filmmaker Rakesh Roshan took adequate care to imbue his inspired turn with classic storytelling Indianisms, a bumbling cop, a coy heroine and an antagonist who is, to be sure, a hyena in human form. With a potpourri this chaotic, the underdog story assumes a whimsical weight, shot to perfection in the hills and ravines of Kasauli and Nainital. The film has been rereleased in select INOX theatres across the country and is on show till 9th August, compelling a relook at some of its depictions and how they have fared with time.
For children growing up during the early naughts, Koi… Mil Gaya and its sequels, most notably Krrish, symbolised an era of financial and creative fecundity, where filmmakers took active risks to create a world that ran apace with its Western counterpart. The achievement in practical visual effects and the scale of storytelling surpassed thresholds previously thought insurmountable. While Koi… Mil Gaya is about an alien who is stranded on Earth and kindles a friendship with a group of children, Krrish follows a superhero who inherits the alien’s superhuman qualities of physical and mental agility to defeat a plot against his father, thus undoing a knot in time. In many ways, the first film is a more serious treatment of humanity and the glory of our very ordinary selves and is well worth watching through the six (not all overlong) musical numbers.
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