Andaz Apna Apna

There's something about madcap comedies that gets you. Their innocence, probably. Or the enjoyable stupidity of it all.

Andaz Apna Apna, a Hindi movie made in 1994 was one such movie, that became a cult classic. It came from a director, who had just given a mega hit in form of the intense social drama, Ghayal, where an all-shouting, iron-thumping Sunny Deol gave the performance of his life, and won a national award. So it was quite a 180 deg turn for Raj Kumar Santoshi, to come up with a comedy like AAA even as he was riding on success of Ghayal.

To get it straight, AAA, did not hit it right at the start. In fact, it was tauted as a flop, by what is called as Industry Trade Circle (whatever that is). I remember I saw the movie with my friends in Alankar theater in Nagpur. The theater was half full (or half empty) and lot of people started leaving the movie before it ended. I din't like it myself for first time.

But somehow, I ended up seeing it's re-runs and somehow that movie started growing on me. It was a strange thing really. It took a while for that movie to take off.

Before we knew, the scenes, the dialogues, those idiotic characters, the small nuggets of that movie started making way into our college life lingo. Someone would recount a funny scene ("Kiske Mama kee bandook hai") and the remaining crowd would go in splits. Of course the last scene is the cherry on this AAA cake. Where "crime master" Gogo, goes the whole nine yards in trying to prove his criminal credentials and the Ram Gopal Bajaj duplicates create havoc while in his 'Den'.

The legendary "mark", a cross made by charcoal on Paresh Rawal's cheek, to indicate the "real" Teja still makes me go bonkers; "Teja maii hoo, mark idhar hai" and the stupendous Goga response to that - "Yeh Teja Teja kya hai, Yeh Teja Teja" (mocking that irritating Subash Ghai song from 90s). Not to mention, the awesome duo of Bhalla and Raabut, who almost had me fall off my chair each time they showed up; specially in that scene where Aamir Khan's character Tillu ("Iska naam hamne Tillu rakha kyunki, woh hame tilay pe mila") uses juice glasses to demonstrate a soccer game, and the look on Bhalla and Raabut's face after the 'game is over'.. is real ROTFL. It's shown that Bhalla and Raabut have a tremendous appetite for fiascos and Bhalla is ever so cool about it everytime, making Teja's blood pressure go past the charts.

I haven't seen the movie again in a while now, but some of it's scenes have stuck to me, like, for ever..

"Sir chai mein shakkar dalne ka time ho gaya"

"Lagta hai uncle bigad gaye; doh char din woh gunde mawalio kay saath rahe aur bigad gaye"..

"Amar Prem, Amar Prem, lagta hai koi Hindi film kay mawali hai"

" Sir, aap ne bataya nahi mera birthday hai"; "Happy Birthday Raabut"

I am not sure, if I would find this movie funny again, or at least as funny again, but at some point, in our lives, this was quite a cult to follow. This was probably one of the last innocent comedies of Bollywood, that I know of. It probably hit the 'kiddie spot' in each of us and how!

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Post Script : I remember reading somewhere that SRK liked this movie so much, he bought rights of it's DVD, i think.