Coolie Cast No 1: Varun Dhawan, Sara Ali Khan, Paresh Rawal, Sahil Vaid, Shikha Talsania, Jaaved Jaaferi, Rajpal Yadav, Johny Lever, Manoj Joshi, Anil Dhawan, Bharti Achrekar
Director of Coolie No 1: David Dhawan
Coolie Score No 1: A star
In 1995, director David Dhawan got his favorite actor to play a funny coolie who falls in love with a rich girl. Her arrogant dad who wants “the only prince without any teacher” for his beloved “always” is the hurdle, but no Bollywood father can stand in the way of true love and comedy and song dancing, right?
The combination Dhawan-Govinda-Karisma-Kader Khan-Shakti Kapoor gave us a film of his times, laden with gags that border on bad taste and dubious lyrics. It became one of the most important hits of the year, which Rangeela and DDLJ also gave us, because Govinda’s good mass man was perfect. At that time, in the middle of the season, he could take practically everything: out-of-color jokes, crimson dresses, and no one could push a pelvis like him, not even his beautiful wives.
But it happened a quarter of a century ago and it seems filmmakers have forgotten that the world has changed. So has Bollywood. When you see Varun Dhawan, who has channeled Govinda into many of his much better films, he walks almost down the same path, speaking almost the same lines, no laughter, just despair.
Minor changes do not produce freshness. The previous film was set in a village: Karisma was a gaon-ki-gori dressed in ghaghra, Govinda wanted to set up a cement factory. In this one, gaon has become Goa. Instead of a factory, it’s a port, and Sara Ali Khan is a city girl with flouncy mini and pointed stilettos. But it lacks the nonsense that was celebrated in its highest tone and the speed with which everything was executed, which David Dhawan used to do so well.
The time for plots built on paper is long gone. It’s painful to see passable actors go through baffling scenes and terrible laugh tracks. Varun and Sara dancing to the still popular songs (“Tujhko mirchi lagi toh main kya karoon”) take you straight back to the OG. The only one who makes a meal of his character, played by the inimitable Kader Khan in the original, is Paresh Rawal. His heavy dad uses a light touch, which is exactly what is needed in this kind of brainless comedy. Dhawan Jr. has done much better under his father’s baton. And sadly, the brilliant Sara Ali Khan is as empty as the script.
We can do with laughter in these dark times, but not so, with zero wit, no touches.