Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara
Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (You won't get this life again) is a 2011 Bollywood Buddy Road Trip film directed by Zoya Akhtar (of Luck by Chance fame. Is starred by Hrithik Roshan, Abhay Deol, Farhan Akhtar, Katrina Kaif and Kalki Koechlin. It follow three friends during a trip to Spain and their misadventures there.
Kabir Dewan (Deol), an architect from Mumbai, has proposed to his longtime girlfriend Natasha (Koechlin). While the preparations for the wedding are ongoing, Kabir decides, as a last thing before marriage, to finally get into a long delayed bachelor trip to Spain with his two best friends, Imran Qureshi (Akhtar) a copywriter, and Arjun Saluja (Roshan) a workaholic financial broker currently living in London. Arjun is reluctant to do the trip, as he could loss pay for missing work; meanwhile, Imran has the secret agenda of using the trip to find his biological father, an artist named Salman Habib, of whose existence he was aware only recently.
The plan is simple: encounter in Barcelona, get to do deep sea diving in the Costa Brava, then do skydiving in Seville, and finally do the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. In the Costa Brava they meet Laila (Kaif), an anglo-indian woman who happens to be their diving instructor, and who immediately connects with Arjun. Ahead, a month of extreme sports, roadtrip, and experiences that change their lives forever awaits.
- Bridezilla: Nataha becomes increasingly this, to Kabir's increasing bafflement.
- Better as Friends: Kabir and Natasha. During Arjun and Laila's wedding in the credits, she appears with a new boyfriend, and Kabir warmly greets both.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Natasha, to the point that she flies to Spain just because he saw Laila in the background and believed she was flirting with Kabir (in reality, Laila was carpooling with them out of attraction for Arjun).
- Cool Car: a part of the travel is done in an amazing red convertible.
- Daddy Had a Good Reason For Abandoning You: Subverted horribly: Salman bluntly says to Imran that he never wanted kids nor anything with him, so he actually left his pregnant girlfriend (re: Imran's mother) in good conscience and was actually happy than another man got of charge with the kid. Imran takes this relatively well, considering...
- Face Your Fears: turns out that each activity in the travel that each one of the friends was planned was purposefully chosen to help their friend(s) to get over their fears. Kabir chose submarinism so Arjun could get over their fear of water due to not knowing how to swim; Arjun chose skydiving so Imran could confront his acrophobia for once and all, and Imran chose the Running of the Bulls as he knew his friends were commitophobic unable to live the moment and needed to confront an actual danger to get some perspective.
- Freudian Excuse: Arjun is a money spider workaholic because he experienced profound poverty as a child and doesn't want to be without financial stability ever again.
- Freudian Trio:
- Imran is the Id, with his trickstery, prankstery, free-spirited personality
- Arjun is The Superego, being more rational and less emotional than his friends
- Kabir is The Ego, who gets stuck reconciling the two above and being the sane-ish of them.
- Forgiveness: Part of the backstory is that Arjun and Imran had a fallout four years ago, due to Imran having had an affair with Arjun girlfriend's at the time. The way Imran saw things, the relationship was in the rocks already before his "intervention" and he just helped to free his friend from an inconvenient woman, so he should be forgiven already; Arjun, even years later and not loving the girl anymore, is still hurt by said betrayal. After the whole fallout with his biological father Imran finally realizes how his actions actually hurt Arjun, and finally ask for forgiveness.
- If We Get Through This: when preparing for the Running of the Bulls the three friends agree that in they survive the running intact they'll do the thing they had dragged their feet for too long (Proposing to Laila for Arjun, Breaking up with Natasha for Kabir, getting his poetry book published for Imran).
- Married to the Job: Arjun, to the point his friends trow off his phone so he can finally enjoy the trip.
- Once More, with Clarity: The first scene of the film is Kabir proposing to Natasha. Then in a flashback, we see what really prompted the proposal.
- The Trickster: Imran and Kabir have both a tendency of create situations to make others embarrass themselves or confess things.
- Toros Y Flamenco: mostly averted. Albeit the stereotypical festivals of La Tomatina and the Running of the Bulls plus a flamenco tableau in Seville appear, Spain is presented in a modern (albeit touristic) way.
- Uptight Loves Wild: Arjun falls in love with the free-spirited Laila
- Wacky Marriage Proposal: Kabir to Natasha... or so it seemed
- Where Da White Women At?: a variation: Nuria, an Spanish girl, express attraction for Imram precisely because he's a dark-skinned Indian (or at least, darker-skinned than her).
- Workaholic: Arjun