One thing my friend and I have been doing lately is watching "multi-years romance" movies to see how different stories play with the same tropes. We've watched When Harry Met Sally, One Day (both the movie and the show), and now Hum Tum.
First of all, I do want to acknowledge that When Harry Met Sally really pioneered this format. In fact, the creators of Hum Tum initially wanted it to be officially recognized as a remake, but Nora Ephron reportedly felt it had evolved into a different enough story that it didn't need that label.
And honestly... I think Hum Tum gets a few things really right.
The film is still centered around the evolution of the male protagonist. We follow a charming playboy learning to fall in love and eventually embracing a more conventional romantic life. That part is pretty classic for this trope.
But unlike One Day (and to a lesser extent When Harry Met Sally), Rhea isn't mainly there to carry Karan through his emotional journey.
Harry spends much of the film processing his divorce. Dexter struggles with addiction, his mother's illness and eventually grief. Sally supports Harry, while Emma repeatedly becomes Dexter's emotional anchor, even as he hurts or disappoints her. The women's emotional labour often becomes part of the men's transformation.
Some would argue that Sally also goes through her own heartbreak after her breakup, and that's true. But for most of the film she keeps those feelings tightly controlled. The one moment where she finally breaks down emotionally is also the moment that leads to her sleeping with Harry. Her vulnerability ultimately becomes another step in his emotional journey.
In Hum Tum, the central tragedy belongs to Rhea.
She loses her husband. She has to navigate widowhood, grief and the social expectations surrounding remarriage. Karan doesn't become a better man because she fixes him. He becomes a better man because he learns how to show up for her. Helping Rhea heal is what slowly changes him.
That reversal made the romance feel much more mutual to me.
I also loved how present the parents are.
It's different from One Day, where Dexter's relationship with his parents is compelling but mostly serves his own character arc and personal tragedies. Emma's parents are never really part of the story. Likewise, When Harry Met Sally keeps family almost entirely off-screen.
In Hum Tum, parents are active participants in the emotional journey. They advise, make mistakes, apologize, love their children openly and sometimes even have to grow themselves. The romance doesn't just heal Karan and Rhea, it also allows fractured family relationships to heal alongside them.
One scene that really stood out to me is right at the beginning, when Karan casually makes misogynistic comments about women and his mother immediately calls him out and tells him to learn how to respect them. The film doesn't pretend he's charming because he's sexist. It presents those attitudes as flaws he actually has to grow out of.
Some of Karan's jokes definitely haven't aged well (it is a 2004 Bollywood romcom after all), but I actually appreciate that the film itself often pushes back against his behaviour instead of celebrating it.
Another interesting difference is what happens after they finally sleep together. In both films, the male lead panics. Both Harry and Karan struggle to acknowledge not only their own feelings, but also the emotional significance of that night for the woman they love.But the reasons behind that panic couldn't be more different.
Harry's freak-out feels very rooted in a Western context. He's terrified of ruining the friendship and, in many ways, of losing the emotional safety net Sally represents. His fear is personal and relational.
Karan's panic, on the other hand, is deeply shaped by the moral expectations surrounding sex and marriage in Indian society. His immediate instinct is to propose, almost as if marriage could "fix" what happened or turn it into something socially acceptable. To him, they've crossed a moral boundary that now needs correcting.
The irony is that Rhea doesn't experience that night as a mistake at all. For her, it's a sincere expression of love. What hurts isn't what happened between them, but Karan's inability to recognize it as something genuine instead of something that needs to be repaired.
I also love how differently the heroines respond. Sally leaves devastated, tries to pretend nothing happened and slowly distances herself. Rhea refuses the ambiguity altogether. When Karan can't meet her where she is emotionally, she simply tells him that they have nothing left to say to each other. She chooses clarity over uncertainty, and I really admired that.
Is Hum Tum perfect? Definitely not.
It's not that Hum Tum completely escapes patriarchal storytelling. Rather, but it reshapes a dynamic that is incredibly common in heterosexual romances. Instead of asking the heroine to heal the hero, it asks the hero to learn how to support her. For a mainstream Bollywood romantic comedy released in 2004, I think that's surprisingly progressive.
Maybe that's why Hum Tum resonated with me the most. All three films ask whether friendship can eventually become love after years of missed timing. But Hum Tum is the only one where I genuinely felt like both protagonists were allowed to carry each other's pain instead of the FMC existing primarily to carry the MMC's.
It's funny, warm, genuinely romantic and still lets both characters become fuller people by the end.
It's probably my favourite version of this trope so far.
Next in line: Heated Rivalry (because my friend deserves to experience Ilya and Shane) and People We Meet on Vacation. The multi-years romance marathon continues. 💛
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