This is quite possibly the finest example of drama overload in Biswajeet’s entire career—maybe even in all of Hindi cinema history! I can’t stop watching it. I shared it last week on the MemsaabStory Facebook page, but since it is still making me laugh every single day and laughter makes the world go round, I thought I’d share it here too.
Hare Kanch Ki Chooriyan is seriously the mother and father of Nahiin Face movies.
Fate has conspired to push snake movies at me from all angles this month; so be it. Until Doodh Ka Karz came along this was my topmost favorite of the genre and it is at least still tied for first. I love it for the ridiculous special effects, the Seventies style, the star-crammed cast and the shape-shifting, vengeful ichchadhari nagin Reena Roy. These things more than make up for the heavy-handed (at times) preaching on a wide number of subjects: marriage, wifely duty, religion, sacrifice, revenge, redemption. I was only planning to mine this for screenshots for my “Nahiin! Face Gallery” (coming soon), but I couldn’t stop watching once I began. There are lots of Nahiin! Face moments, but there are some surprisingly sensitive ones too. All in all it’s an odd mixture of things, almost none of them boring.
Thwarted in my previous snake-movie viewing attempt by Sky Entertainment’s poor quality control, I moved on to this long-overdue-for-watching one and was much happier in any case. Not only is heroine Neelam not smacked in the face every other minute (although her father does want to kill her at one point, but he is Amrish Puri so it’s to be expected); but there are a lot more snakes and Aruna Irani (or her representative) lactates onscreen. She also (a la Smita Patil before her) sets out to pump her newborn son full of hatred, albeit somewhat less successfully, possibly because Jackie Shroff doesn’t have to also learn disco. Or maybe because Jackie has more snake backup than Mithun so doesn’t need to be as angry. I don’t know. I just know that I would much rather watch snakes massing in military formation and launching themselves like missiles than watch men pounding each other to a bloody pulp (although there is some of that too).
Even if all the Anguished Magic Snakes, Oompa Loompa Tantrics, Been music, Aamir Khans and Indian Geoffrey Rushes in the world were in this film:
I couldn’t be sad that the Sky DVD stopped working at the 1:20:49 mark.
I was tired of watching Juhi Chawla getting hit in the face by the men who “loved” her.
She had also been married off and widowed at the age of three, and is sent to her sasurals‘ house when she falls for Aamir because, you know, an Indian woman only loves/marries once. Even in 1990.
Anybody who comes here regularly will not be surprised that I could not resist a film called Big Pigeon. And I’m so glad I didn’t—it is oodles of fun, with a talented ensemble cast, nice RD Burman songs, and lots of laughs. And *wow* I love Rehana Sultan. What a shame she got pigeon-holed (yes pun intended, my bad) and her career fizzled. Deven Verma wrote, produced, directed and starred in this comic crime caper; the internet appears to believe that Amitabh Bachchan and Helen star in it, but Helen has just one cabaret dance and Amitabh is nowhere to be seen (nor is he credited, as imdb claims). It’s possible that he had an uncredited guest appearance but if so, it’s gone.
I didn’t miss him: Ashok Kumar, Leela Mishra, Rehana Sultan, Deven Verma, Pinchoo Kapoor and a little butterball toddler billed as “Golu (A Wonder Child)” kept me enthralled and in stitches.
MemsaabStory 