Cocktail 2 Trailer Spins The Wheel Of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai Loveology: 'Pyaar Dosti Hai'

Pyaar dosti hai.

Even if you are not a millennial kid, Shah Rukh Khan made sure you remember the line just like his popular screen name, Rahul. So did Karan Johar and his Dharma Productions.

Homi Adajania's Cocktail 2, a spiritual sequel to his 2012 film Cocktail, appears to take a new spin on this famous Kuch Kuch Hota Hai line.

How?

We don't have the bigger picture yet, as only the trailer was released yesterday. But Shahid Kapoor's short introduction to the theme in the trailer demands a legit discussion on love, friendship, and whether pyaar still equals love.

Maddock Films Takes A Bite Of KJo's Pie

A generation born in the late 1990s, and the ones that followed, believed this peak KJo line to start a relationship in a pre-social media era.

Time was naive; people were innocent; and films had the power to make people fall in love, navigate the one-way traffic from friendship to love, and life thereafter.

Above all, there was an unblemished faith in the institutions of love and friendship beyond the screen.

As years passed, Karan Johar himself took a U-turn from his 'naive' days and apologised for a lot of things from his directorial debut.

He said 'sorry' for Kajol's stereotyped tomboy portrayal, for gender politics, and for almost everything the trolls pointed out.

But 'pyaar dosti hai' was not among them.

With the passing years, Dharma Productions has dissected its own theory, synthesised new ideas in subsequent productions, or given other films 'food for thought' (read: love).

Given the universality of basic emotions like love and friendship, Dharma Productions doesn't have the sole authority to preach its theory.

Maddock Films, fronted by Dinesh Vijan, seems to take a bite of KJo's age-old apple pie in this era of slow Bollywood rom-coms.

Obviously, they have made it their own.

Pyaar, Dosti And Threesome?

Shahid Kapoor, who plays Kunal in the film, introduces love with these words in the trailer: "Every new relationship seems fun because it's new. Stories are new, people are new. So is the emotion. But what's the solution if love starts feeling like friendship or friendship gets intertwined with love..."

His incomplete sentence gets a full stop with Kriti Sanon's three-word reply.

"Like a threesome?" she asks in the trailer.

These Gen-Z-coded words seem to open the cap of unfiltered imagination. Lesbian love story? Confused love story? A man with two brides? Clickbait headlines have flooded the Internet already.

But what's the real story?

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai simply places love and friendship at the centre — love is friendship, friendship is love.

There were no ifs and buts, no solutions asked for, no confusion to address because it was simple. Either you buy it, or you discard it.

Cocktail 2 is a story of confusion, a story that challenges established ideas with a new proposition. Basically, it negates the belief Johar and Khan taught back in 1998 — not with a stick in hand, but introducing the friendship-band culture.

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai And The Loveology

Remember the epic classroom where the teacher Ms Briganza (Archana Puran Singh) asks students to define love?

Newcomer Tina (Rani Mukerji) doesn't. Least-bothered Anjali (Kajol) doesn't.

The one with the ready answer is Rahul — Shah Rukh Khan.

"Pyaar dosti hai" is Rahul's classic one-liner.

"If she doesn't become my best friend, I can't love her. Because love doesn't exist without friendship. Simple. Pyaar dosti hai," Rahul explains.

This article doesn't attempt to judge whether Rahul was right or wrong.

But the film that popularised this line definitely didn't find any dichotomy between love and friendship.

Cocktail And The Saga 

Back in 2012, Homi Adajania first introduced audiences to pyaar-dosti and everything in between in Cocktail, featuring Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone and Diana Penty.

The gender politics and the emotional fulcrum of the film can be debated. But there was no dialogue hinting that love and friendship were at loggerheads.

Fourteen years later, Homi Adajania wants to keep the same youthful vibe intact with the love-dosti formula, but with a 'threesome' punchline. Is it really new, or new wine in an old bottle?

Conclusion

Headlined by three A-list stars, Cocktail 2 promises to bring some respite in a Dhurandhar-fied time where men and women will talk about love in everyday lingo rather than to prove their allegiance to the country.

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai vibes are conspicuous in the dialogue introduced in the trailer. But will it expound its theory holistically and give us a line like 'Pyaar Dosti Hai?'

Like us, Karan Johar and Shah Rukh Khan will probably be watching closely.

Also Read | Cocktail 2 Trailer: Shahid, Kriti, Rashmika's Confusion Over Pyaar-Dosti