Chashme Baddoor | Bollywood Film (2013) | Hindi Movie Reviews

Chashme Baddoor is a popular movie from the old time and it is often considered as classic. A movie by Sai Paranjape, with real life characters and simple drama revolved around them. I remember when Mr. Narayan Murty was interviewed by Farooq Sheikh on the Hindi TV Show – Jeena Isika Naam Hai, Mrs. Sudha Murty specified that they viewed Chashme Baddoor and liked it!

Now it seems to be the remake era. Be it RamGopal Varma Ki Aag or Himmatwala, some remakes disappoint us. And on the contrary, there are remakes like Devdas (made several times), Mother India (was remake of Aurat) which pleases us. And there are other remakes, which share moderate success (like Don, AgneePath and others). Even Hollywood have trends of remake. Conan The Barbarian and Total Recall are not the only examples. Several Batman films, Superman movies and others are already made. Again, here also, some achieved great success and some failed, the scenario is same.

So it is not a question to debate, whether the remakes should be made. The simple answer is, if you genuinely feel that you have talent and resource to make something really better than the origin, just go for it, otherwise, don’t play with the memories of those masterpieces. So one must understand that hen you are making a remake, you hold the responsibility to do better than the previous version.

David Dhawan, one of the successful maker of the comedies when teamed up with Govinda (then Salman and Sanjay), however has given some box office bombs as well. It happens with every maker though, what we are keen about is, this movie should not be implanted with two-meaning dialogs, vulgarity and stretching people to laugh situations. Of course, every director have his own way and style, which (s)he cannot go away from, but while working on a remake, (s)he must have to be careful to some main attributes of the original. So with association of David, we expect entertainer which is paisa wasool kind of, and as Sai Paranjape is associated with Screenplay, we hope for the magic of simplicity and emotions (which we have visited in her works in past).

Let us see what this version of Chashme Baddoor have, to offer the viewers.

As the movie story is quite known and much discussed, we will be taking a bird’s eye view only. The film starts with Omkar Sharma (aka Omi)’s performance in a “Kavi Sammelan”. In parallel, Jay’s audition for a film was also going on. The cheap lines Omi presents from the stage, are making us think what is coming next! Ditto, Jay is also going out of control in his shoot. If you compare both these intros, Jay’s intro is passable. But we got the idea that this film is going to be an adult comedy (or at least on border line of the same), to a disappointment (and as assumed). By the way his third friend Siddharth aka Sid is genuine fellow in this direction.

Seema, daughter of an army officer is happy-go-lucky girl. His father is very curious to get her married with an army officer only. And, he has Major Pratap (who seema calls Pattu) in his eyes. On the contrary, Seema doesn’t like him. So she flew away from her home and went to Goa, at her uncle’s home, where her grandmother also lives.

Both Omi and Jay tries to befriend with her (with the only target in mind… you know it). But both failed differently. However they both make stories about the positive response by Seema and all. There are two more interesting characters in the film. Mr. Joseph who runs a cafe cum restaurant where these three friends are eating for free since more than a year. Ms. Josephine is the landlady in whose home these friends are living and since more than a year they were unable to pay rent to her. Though living in the same town, Mr. Joseph and Mrs. Josephine don’t know each other.

Once when Joseph was out in the market to get a table fan repaired, he saw Josephine and fall in for here, without knowing her. The friends oversaw it and decided to play with them in a way that they can get some benefits. They implement the plan to message Josephine from Joseph and vice versa, to produce romantic feelings for each other. With this, they will be able to live in Josephine’s house for free and can eat at Joseph’s place for free as well.

Sid eventually meets Seema and they fall in for each other. Even Seema’s uncle and grand-mother were happy with this development. Once Seema went to meet Sid at his room and both Omi and Jay saw her. Now there comes the feeling of jealousy. As both of them, who consider themselves as casanova, failed to impress the girl, but simplicity of Sid made him do so, without any efforts. And when a friend is jealous, it is bitter than the enemy. And here they are two in stead of one. They decide to break this relationship between Sid and Seema!!! They also create misunderstanding between Joseph and Josephine as well, to prevent them meeting each other!

What will happen now? If, when and how does the things worked out between Siddharth and Seema, and Joseph and Josephine? Watch the movie to know it.

If to talk performances, Anupam Kher is type casted for such roles, and there is nothing new for him to show. Rishi Kapoor and Lilette Dubey are at the top of the chart. Siddharth and Divyendu justifies their characters. Ali Zafar is good. Taapsee Pannu doesn’t have the persona needed for the role. She tries but doesn’t convince much. A couple of songs with old melody tunes are good. Background music is competent. Cinematography is good. The dialogs are good at places, same for narration. If director have avoided some adult material, it could have been a family watch.

Overall a good film for time pass. But remember that it is not for the family audience.