Krazzy 4 (released in 2008) - Starring Juhi Chawla, Arshad Warsi, Irrfan Khan, Suresh Menon, Dia Mirza and Rajpal Yadav

Rakesh Roshan has produced and made many great movies over the past decades, but sometimes even a guy like him can slip up. You have to be somewhat crazy yourself to like such a movie, although there are some parts that make you laugh. The cast of characters are all great character actors, and that helps the movie somewhat, and the same with the concept, where they take 4 people who have been locked up in a hospital for various mental illnesses and the mess which ensues when they are outside the hospital, and how they help their doctor though all this, the same doctor who has been kidnapped right in front of them.
In order to get some more star power, the movie had guest appearances from some superstars and others - Shahrukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan and Rakhi Sawant.
The movie was directed by Jaideep Sen, with the story by Ashwni Dhir, making this a rare movie, a movie produced by Rakesh Roshan, and not directed by him. There was some controversy related to the music of the film, with music composer Ram Sampath filing a case that a couple of the songs were essentially copied from work that he had done, and finally the case was settled out of court (with the court however ordering the producers to delete these songs from the movie).




So what is the movie all about ? It is about these 4 patients of the mental hospital, all of them with different illnesses (although why all of them need to be admitted is not clear given their problems):
Raja - Gets very angry (explosively angry) - Played by Arshad Warsi
Gangadhar - Obsessed with the freedom struggle and has friendships with long dead freedom fighters - played by Rajpal Yadav
Dr. Mukherjee - Diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and a cleanliness freak - Played by Irrfan Khan
Daboo - A man capable of speaking, but has not done so for many years - Played by Suresh Menon
In addition to this, Juhi Chawla plays their married doctor who wants to take them out for a day to get them to see a cricket match between India and England, and who gets kidnapped right in front of one of them, as a part of a serious plot.
Dia Mirza plays the role of a journalist who was in love with Raja, but left him. She runs the news for a TV news channel.
Overall, the movie deals with the time when she takes them out of the hospital for the break, but when she leaves them in the van outside for some work, one of them steps out and sees her being kidnapped, and motivates the others to find her. They run into a whole host of issues but try and determine who has kidnapped her and why, and since they are inmates from a mental hospital, have to get her convinced when they tell her about the reasons why she was kidnapped.

Sunday (released in 2008) - Starring Ajay Devgn, Ayesha Takia, Arshad Warsi and Irfan Khan

Rohit Shetty is now counted as one of the most successful Directors, with the tag of the most money making movie in Bollywood in his pocket (through the release of Chennai Express - the quality of the movie is not up for discussion in this post). He has been making movies which are over the top, with cars flying all over the place; when a person is hit, he can go flying for long distanes, almost to the extent of behaving like you would expect in a cartoonish movie. However, this film somehow did not carry the Rohit Shetty traditional feel, and did not so well at the box movie (which may be why Rohit Shetty has been making all his movies post Sunday as over the top, and most of them have been known only as entertainers, but painful for critics to review). The movie starred his traditional stars - Ajay Devgn and Arshad Warsi, and also starred Ayesha Takia and Irfan Khan. Music was by a whole host of music directions, with almost every song having a separate music director, but the songs were not particularly impressive - which is the story of the movie (nothing was really that impressive). The movie is actually a remake of a 2005 Telugu film.
So what is the story all about ? It seems like you have heard of this one before. A girl has a strange disease, whereby she can forget entirely what she been doing, even for as large a time as a full day. And somebody is murdered, and the girl cannot even remember what happened. In fact, initially she does not even realize that she is missing a whole Sunday from her life. This girl is Sehar (played by Ayesha Takia). She stays with another girl called Ritu, and one day, almost forcefully, Ritu takes Sehar out to a local club - because Sehar tends to forget where she has been, she prefers not to socialize like this.




Her mother wants Sehar to link up with a policeman, ACP Rajveer Randhawa (played by Ajay Devgn), who is a typical cop in the sense that he can be corrupt when he wants to be. His mother and Sehar's mother know each other and want both of them to get married, but Sehar has rejected the idea since she got to know about the corrupt ways of Rajveer. After the club, Sehar wakes up in her flat, but soon realizes that something is wrong - that she is missing something. She meets a couple of strange characters - one is a taxi driver and one is a struggling actor. After some discussion with Rajveer, they come to the conclusion that she given something in the club because of which she totally went out and forgot what happened on Sunday.
Slowly, Rajveer finds out that Sehar is related in some way to a murder of another girl that happened, and that the taxi driver had left Sehar near where the girl was murdered, and surprisingly the corrupt cop did a quick investigation and finally caught the guy who had murdered his own cheating girl-friend and then later killed the one with whom she was having an affair. Because Sehar was nearby, he thought that she had witnessed the murder, and was after her for that reason. Finally Rajveer manages to solve everything.

Golmaal Returns - the extra suspicious wife and a murder (released in 2008)

When you get a successful film, there is a pressure to create a franchise, create more movies with the same set of actors and the director in the hope that viewers will also like this movie and make it successful. This has actually worked in many cases, with sequels of movies in Hollywood (Terminator, Pirates of the Carribean, Superman, Spiderman, etc) doing excellent business and providing riches to their creators. Of course there have been cases when the same success has not come to the next movie, but then there is no harm in trying. In the case of Bollywood, the concept of leveraging on the success of a previous movie is a pretty late one, only in the past decade that it has been seen. Golmaal indeed could be one of the first ones to make this a success, even though the sequels have no connection with the previous one in terms of story, but do have the same crew (director, and many actors and actresses being the same). Golmaal Returns was one such movie, which was released in 2008, in order to leverage the success of the earlier Golmaal (which was released in 2006).
Between the 2 movies, the director was the same (Rohit Shetty), and the main crew members were the same (Ajay Devgun, Tusshar Kapoor and Arshad Warsi). Sharman Joshi was no longer there in the sequel, and the heroine was also changed, with Kareena Kapoor brought in to enhance the star power, and some additional actors and actresses also brought in. The movie was a hit, even though critics were not particularly impressed by the movie - the humour in the original Golmaal seemed pretty genuine, while the humor in this one seemed a bit forced, written in to try and put more humour in the script, and leaving a slight jarring edge. But no matter, audiences loved it, and it was a hit. The songs were also liked, with the music being composed by Pritam, and one song 'Thar kar Le' being composed by Ashish Pandit (and the lyrics for the movie were by Sameer).
Now onto the story. I was not particularly fascinated by the story, since the attempt seemed to be to bring as many characters into the storyline and use some incredible coincidences to push the story forward. So, here goes (and if you have not seen the movie and want to keep your suspense, do not read ahead of this point).
Gopal (Devgun) and Ekta (Kareena Kapoor) are a couple with 2 siblings - Esha (Amrita Arora) is the sister of Gopal, and Lucky (Tusshar Kapoor, playing a mute) is the brother of Ekta. Ekta is an avid watcher of hindi serials (particularly the Balaji type serials) and is very suspicious of Gopal. Gopal keeps on warning her from time to time to not be so suspicious, since it would create problems for them.

Gopal works in a fishing company and has some periodic clashes with people in his company (not very serious though), especially when he believes that his colleague is instigating his wife against him. And then something happens which would cause the suspicion of Ekta to become reality. He is coming home from work, when he sees a girl being assaulted by some hoodlums and saves Meera (Celina Jaitley) from those goons. Unfortunately, due to some circumstances, they are forced to spend the night together on a yacht (although nothing happens between them).
Now, when Gopal reaches home the next morning, there is going to be trouble. Ekta, ever suspicious, wants to know where he was; Gopal obviously cannot tell her the truth, so he lies that he was with a friend of his. When Ekta pushes him for the name of the friend, Gopal comes up with a name 'Anthony Gonsalves', with a fictitious address. However, Ekta is very suspicious and sends of a letter to Anthony, and in the coincidence of a lifetime, there is actually a person called Anthony Gonsalves and an actual address and the letter is received.
One of Gopal's juniors, Laxam Prasad (Shreyas Talpade), who claims to be a great problem solver, then decides to take the place of Anthony to ensure that Ekta is not suspicious. Another coincidence, Laxman is also the boyfriend of Meera, and Meera has not told him about this incident. And then the big problem, where a dead man is found where Gopal had fought the goons, and this is the same person Gopal's office with whom he had a tiff. This brings inspector Madhav (played by Arshad Warsi) on the scene; Madhav is in love with Gopal's sister but has a running feud with Gopal and is incredibly happy that there is a chance for him to put Gopal in a difficult position.
Eventually, Madhav learns that Laxman is not Anthony, and when they tell him about Meera (and in the meantime, Ekta leaves Gopal when she learns that he told her a lie), he tells Gopal that he better bring Meera quickly to the station if he wants to save himself. Gopal and Laxam hire Munni to play the role of Meera, which she is willing to do for the money. However, her boyfriend, Vasuli, currently behind bars, is not happy at this. And then Munni is kidnapped by the murderer.

And then starts a whole trail of events to try and find Munni, in the meantime Vasuli kidnaps Meera since he wants his Munni back, and then finally Gopal learns that his boss was behind the murder since he was smuggling drugs under the guise of the fishing business, and his colleague was killed because he found out. After some more drama, there is a happy ending.

Golmaal returns (DVD on Amazon)	Music for Golmaal returns - Amazon	Golmaal Returns - Movie on Flipkart

Songs from the movie Golmaal Returns: Tha Kar Ke (link) Vacancy (link) Tu Saala (link) Meow (link)

Lage Raho Munnabhai - continuation of the Munnabhai series

With the success of Munnabhai MBBS, it was clear that there would be a sequel, it was just waiting for the sequel to come. And so came the sequel in 2006, called Lage Raho Munnabhai (carry on Munnabhai). The movie starred the main set of 2 characters, Munnabhai (Sanjay Dutt) and his sidekick Circuit (Arshad Warsi). The movie showcases the story of a ruffian who becomes infused with Gandhian ideals (under the influence of the spirit of Gandhi), and tries to share the same with others around him, mixed with a Mumbai type way of speaking.
Sanjay Dutt is Munnabhai, a Mumbai don who indulges in the familiar show of force, and employs muscles to get his work done. He is also infatuated with a local radio jockey Janhavi (Vidya Balan) and wants to get to meet her. However, how to get a ruffian to meet a beautiful radio jockey is not easy to visualize, and then he hears of a contest where the first person to answer multiple questions asked by her gets to meet her. The contest is about answering questions on Mahatma Gandhi (Bapu), and this is where the mix with Gandhian ideology starts to happen.



How does a local hood answer questions about Mahatma Gandhi ? Well, he does this by kidnapping a group of professors by force, and then asking them to answer the questions (and of course, if a professor answers the question correctly, he would get a prize). So, Munnabhai gets the answers correctly, and being highly nervous, manages to make it to the radio station to meet his lady love. He presents himself as an expert in Gandhian ideology, and impresses her to the extent that she takes him with her to present a lecture on Gandhian philosophy to a community of senior citizens (after taking a massive crash course in Gandhian ideology). In this time period, Gandhi appears to him and offers to help him, as long as Munnabhai does everything that Gandhi asks him to do.
And so starts the experiment of a underworld don with Gandhi's spirits, in which he comes much closer to Janhavi and even hosts a radio problem along with her where he expounds the logic of Gandhian ideals and offers to solve the problems of people. And it is here that the movie is mesmerizing, bringing forth the ideals of Gandhi's truths in various stories; the story about the guy who loses his father's money in the stock market and is contemplating suicide, and who calls Munnabhai as a lost soul is incredible, heart moving. The solution is typically Gandhian.
The twist in the main plot is of course the builder Lucky Singh (Boman Irani) who wants to get the old people evicted from the house so that he can gift the house to his daughter's future father-in-law Kulbhushan Kharbanda. He employs Munnabhai and Circuit to get this done, and uses a time when Munnabhai has gone with Janhavi and the old folks to Goa, with circuit emptying the house (not knowing that this was something that Munnabhai would not have wanted). When Munnabhai gets back, he is shocked, but Lucky Singh is unwilling to give the house back. And so starts the attempt by Munnabhai to use Gandhian philosophy to force Lucky Singh to give the house back - in the midst of this, Munnabhai is forced to confront the truth and tell Janhavi all about himself and the truth (and of course she leaves him).
However, it is this Gandhigiri that allows Munnabhai to eventually win out and use the power of truth to solve his problems. The movie inspired a large number of people to adopt Gandhian practices to try to solve their problems.

Videos of songs from the movie:

Pal Pal Har Pal (a very beautiful song)



Samjho Ho hi Gaya



Corruption scene mixed with Gandhism (great scene)



Atmaram Birthday Comedy



Bande Mein Tha Dum