Review : Jaane bhi do yaaron

Definitely the funniest hindi movie I’ve seen, this is the story of two friends, (Vinod – Naseeruddin Shah and Sudhir – Ravi Baswani) attempting to start-up their own photo studio. Business is very slow, but prospects look good when they are approached by Shobha (Barve) editor of “Khabardaar” newspaper. Shobha, feeding the simple-minded duo a spiel about righteousness and honesty, assigns them the job of spying/photographing the shady dealings between Police commisioner D’Mello (Satish Shah) and property builder Tarneja (Pankaj Kapoor). The two, on assignment come across corruption and bribery to win the tender for building a flyover. The main players in this are D’Mello, Tarneja and his rival Ahuja (Om Puri).

While spying on the nefarious three, Sudhir and Vinod get a whiff of a murder, but do not know who the killer is. They manage to retrieve the corpse as proof, but subsequently lose it. What follows, and is pretty much the rest of the movie, is a long, extended chase (and what a chase – meanders into the oddest of places) with the bad guys (Tarneja, and Co.) and the good guys (Vinod and Sudhir) chasing the corpse.

This is a short, slickly directed film, and has a cast of excellent actors. Baswani and Shah with their comic timing and bumbling escapades make this a riot. Pankaj Kapoor, Satish shah and Om Puri adequately represent the bad guys, with Kapoor and Puri responsible for some great comic scenes. Bhakti Barve turns in a sharp performance as the shrewd Shobaji. And Neena Gupta (as Priya) and Satish Kaushik (as Ashok) as Tarneja’s sidekicks are very good. The movie doesn’t have songs, except for maybe the hummable “Hum honge kaamyaab”. No heroine either, forthat matter.

This film was made in 1983, and to-date there is no better hindi comedy than this. Kundan Shah’s later efforts are no match for this classic film.