Come lets laugh - Top 10 Bollywood Comedies

It seems to be the season of "Top 10" in blogland. Both FilmiGirl and the Post-Punk Cinema Club have put up their selection of top 10 songs for various decades. Never having done a top 10 of anything before, I promptly and shamelessly decided to copy the idea. However, to weed out Top 10 songs from literally hundreds of songs every decade is a Herculean task and a beginner like me needs something much simpler. After much cogitation I settled on Top 10 Comedies simply because great comedies in Bollywood appear but rarely and it shouldnt be hard to select 10. Having committed myself to the task, I realised that Bollywood has way too many great comedies to make this any easier than top 10 songs!

What you see here is the result of sheer hard work and days of frantic weeding and ruthless trimming - I've even managed to limit myself to only two comedies each from directors Basu Chatterji and Hrishikesh Mukherji who between them were responsible for most of the great comedies in the 70s and 80s!

If jest be the food of life, read on... and dont forget to tell me about your favorite comedies.

10. Andaz Apna Apna (1994) - Yaallah!!

Two bumbling young men meet up on the path of get-rich-quick by attempting to marry the same rich girl. Alternately collaborating and competing with each other for their heiress, they run into bizarre villains, confusing look-alikes and every possible situation that a hero of a successful 70s masala block-buster could look forward to. From these trials they emerge triumphant, with their love-lives and fortunes made. What makes it especially amusing is its use of cliches to create a hilarious parody of masala movies. Salman Khan and Aamir Khan as the aspiring fortune-hunters are uproariously funny and ably supported by their heroines - Raveena Tandon and Karishma Kapoor - their villains - Shakti Kapoor, Shehzad Khan and Viju Khote - and the goody-baddy lookalikes played by Paresh Rawal. Raj Kumar Santoshi's tongue-in-cheek nod to 70s Bollywood still has me in splits everytime I watch it, though I havent watched it as often as Veracious seems to have!

From Hollywood to Bollywood - of romantic comedies and remakes

I was meditating on my review for Suhana Safar - an adaptation of It Happened One Night - when it struck me that many of my favorite Hindi movies are remakes/adaptations of Hollywood classics. In most cases I found that I loved the Hindi versions as much as, if not better than, the original ones. The gray cells jumped in excitement - why not do a post on remakes and adaptations? So, here goes...

Warning: very long post with spoilers ahead.

1. Come September (1961)

American tycoon Robert Talbot (Rock Hudson) visits his Italian villa once a year in September to meet his fiery Italian girl friend Lisa (Gina Lollobrigida). In his absence, his enterprising butler Maurice (Walter Slezak) has turned the villa into a very profitable hotel. When Talbot suddenly decides to visit Italy in June, Maurice's hotel has a group of girls (Sandra Dee and friends) chaperoned by Margaret (Brenda De Banzie), staying at the hotel. What will Maurice do to avoid discovery? He tells Talbot that the girls are taking shelter at the villa due to lack of hotel rooms in town while the girls are told that Talbot is a lunatic whose family used to own the villa. Enter: a group of boys (Bobby Darin and friends) camping outside the hotel/villa and the stage is set for the comedy to begin. Talbot finds himself playing the heavy-handed guardian to the girls and unable to openly spend time with Lisa. The boys' attempts to outwit him and get to the girls make for hilarious situations. Apart from all the beautiful people and the hilarious comedy, the best part of the movie is Rock Hudson dancing the 60's dance - he is adorably dorky!