Everyone knows that Dharmendra is a he-man, good at fighting and drinking and other manly stuff. Luckily for us ladies, he is also good at romance. And as Jaya Bachchan has famously pointed out: he is as handsome as a Greek god. Almost all the playback singers of his time could sing realistically for him, too; he didn’t fit just one type of voice. Here are my ten favorite (so far! I still have lots more of his films to watch) Dharmendra musical moments.
I really need to see more Tanuja. I like her in everything I see her in (Jewel Thief, Do Chor, Haathi Mere Saathi, for example) even if I haven’t particularly liked the movie much (Mere Jeevan Saathi, for example). It holds true for this film too: Tanuja is lovely and fun to watch. Despite a lively soundtrack from RD Burman and Amitabh’s lambi presence, the film really only lit up when she was onscreen. The story is ho-hum, and there’s all the usual overacting and melodrama, but she makes it watchable somehow.
Somewhere on the world wide web it says: “Coolie was the biggest grocer of 1983!” Heh heh. That is probably due to the fact that its star Amitabh Bachchan was seriously injured on the sets and almost died—everyone knows that story by now. Many people write the film off now as the same old hackneyed Manmohan Desai story with an aging Big B who was no longer hero material, but I really liked it. Sure, it has now-familiar Desai themes, and it is predictable. Predictably good!!!
Plus, this film is a little less crazed than some of his others. It sticks mostly with the main story, weaving in the side plots more neatly than usual. It’s also a bit lighter on the religious symbolism (most of the characters are Muslim, and secularism is waved at only in passing) and on the usual heavy-handed preaching and long-winded speeches.
When people roll their eyes and scoff at “Bollywood” this is the kind of film it’s nice to have on hand to prove all their misconceptions wrong. It is a powerful social drama with great performances from everyone and a tightly written (Gulzar) and directed (Hrishikesh Mukherjee) story. There’s not a minute wasted. It’s sad—and you know I hate sad—but it’s a film I’m glad I’ve seen and would heartily recommend, though my swollen eyes may never recover. Wah!
Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan are paired again as best friends after Anand, and are superb. And Om Shivpuri (who is inextricably linked in my brain to evil Mr. Oberoi in Disco Dancer) delivers in a small but pivotal role as an unscrupulous businessman. The core issue—socialism as a cure for the plight of the middle and lower classes (and a responsibility of the wealthy) still seems as relevant today as it was thirty-five years ago.
This movie made me laugh so hard that I literally cried, and had to pause it so as not to miss anything. Apart from the two Munnabhai films, it’s the funniest (intentionally) Hindi movie I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen plenty). Comedy is the hardest genre to translate across cultures, but this one does it in spades. I would say in fact that it’s got to be one of the funniest films ever made anywhere, period, and is as close to perfect as anything gets.
The tongue-in-cheek celebration of filmi conventions, romance, student life, and friendship is hilarious; and the characters are portrayed so perfectly sweetly and heartwarmingly that you can’t help but love them, even when they do bad things. The cast is superb: Farooq Sheikh and Deepti Naval (whom I enjoyed immensely in Kissise Na Kehna and Katha) get incomparable support from Saeed Jaffrey, Ravi Baswani and Rakesh Bedi. I run short of superlatives!
In the film Namak Halaal (1982) there is a funny scene in the hotel club where Arjun (Amitabh Bachchan) has food spilled on one of his shoes; when he tries to clean it off in the canal that goes through the club, he loses it, and then spends the next 20 minutes or so trying desperately to get it back without being noticed (this naturally involves a drunk man falling in, Amitabh almost falling in, and general mayhem).
Which Hollywood film is this scene copied (almost exactly) from?
I do love a good buddy film. Redford and Newman in The Sting and Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, and James Caan and Billy Dee Williams in Brian’s Song (the most surefire way to get an American man to cry) illuminate those films with friendships that remain vivid long after the lights come back on.
So here are my favorite Hindi movie buddy roles—and brothers are not allowed. So…no Shashitabh here, sorry (Shashitabh probably deserve a post of their own some day).
MemsaabStory 
