💬 Dil Chahta Hai, 20 times and counting, and it hits differently every few years

Dil Chahta Hai. I've watched it at least 20 times since 2001 and I'm not embarrassed about it. First time was at a single screen in Abids with 3 college friends who had bunked a lab. Since then I watch it once a year at least. Usually when I'm low, sometimes just because it's a Sunday. I know most of the lines. My wife has started saying them before the actors do, just to annoy me. I used to think it was the jokes. Aamir in that goatee, the way he talks to everyone like they're slow. But the jokes aren't what get me now. It's the part where the 3 of them stop talking for months. I watched that part at 21 and felt nothing. Watched it again last year and had to pause it. Same film, same scene, same old DVD. I'm the one who changed, obviously. I've lost touch with 2 of those 3 friends from the first show. Not a fight. Just jobs, cities, kids. 1 is in Pune, 1 in Muscat. The third one still calls every Ramadan and we talk for an hour. Maybe that's why it hits harder now. Back then it was a film about friends. Now it feels like a warning. Okay, that sounds dramatic. It's also just a very funny film. Both things are true. What's yours? The one film you go back to no matter how many times you've seen it. Not the best film ever made, just the one you can't stop rewatching. I'm guessing a lot of people will say Andaz Apna Apna. Fair enough, that's my second. Third is probably Hum Aapke Hain Koun, but only because my mother puts it on every Eid.

Rewatching the same film that many times would drive me a little restless, I prefer cycling through a rotation of five or six instead of committing to just one favorite repeatedly over the years.

An old Shah Rukh film does this for me, watched it enough times that my sister can recite lines along with the screen before they are even said out loud. Tried explaining the appeal to a friend who had never seen it and completely failed to capture why it works, some films just do not translate secondhand at all no matter how you describe them.

For me it is Andaz Apna Apna, must be past twenty rewatches at this point and I still laugh at the crow scene every single time. I have tried figuring out why this one holds up when other comedies I loved eventually wear thin, and I think it is the timing between the actors more than any single joke. What is your pick that never seems to get old?