An open letter to David Dhawan after watching ‘Coolie No.1’

Dear David,

Merry Christmas, David. I’m so moved that  you’ve given your brother Anil Dhawan  a role in your latest comedy,  your 45th farce Coolie  No  1.  Agar bhai bhai ke kaam na aaye tooh phir kaamyaabi ka kaam kya? You’ve even given your brother (who plays a millionaire in a filmy bungalow  which your son Varun describes as, ‘Yeh bungalow nahin Bangaal (Bengal)  hai’)!

But Coolie No 1 is not  about your brother. It’s  about your son, Varun . And he has lots  more kissing to do than your brother (whose role is briefer than Sara Ali Khan’s  clothes, though I am sure the budget for Sara’s clothes must be ten times what you paid your brother). For some strange reason Varun keeps kissing Sara everywhere…in the shower,  in the swimming pool etc. I stopped counting the kisses. And started admiring your  sense of innovativeness. The kiss is your way of  keeping with  the times.  Who knows, in your next comedy Varun may  even kiss Rajpal Yadav, if we’re lucky. Here in Coolie  No 1  we have the  privilege of seeing Varun and his  sidekick (Sahil Vaid dressed as two  women named  Kareena and Karisma.

What  drag  act! For the record the Kapoor sisters are not suing.

More for the  record,  Govinda didn’t kiss Karisma Kapoor even once  in Coolie No 1. He didn’t need to. He had to resort  to no extraneous props to get our attention. Varun , your son, tries every trick in the book to get our attention. In fact he impersonates so  many actors that  the footage feels  like prop-o-ganda(dirty) for the all-time greats , most prominently Amitabh Bachchan whose Coolie directed  by Manmohan Desai is  not only an inspiration for Varun but, in the cleverest part of the  film, the animation credit titles tell us that Bachchan Saab’s Coolie adopted Varun’s Coolie in this  film and  brought him up as his own.

This, I’m afraid, is the only stroke of  inventiveness  in the tortuously unfunny 2 hour 14  minute film that has some of  the most hideous  artwork I’ve ever seen. David. I’m so glad I saw the film at home. To watch the riot of garish colours, unimaginative sets, ditzy itsy-bitsy costumes on the big screen would be unbearable.

The world has moved on since Coolie No  1 first staged its staggering absurdness 25 years ago. The same  nonsensical  drama staged for today’s audience, specially at time when the OTT  platform has opened  the doors to a whole new world  of cinematic entertainment, is to be caught in  a time warp. Nothing has changed since Coolie  No 1 in  1995  except that Varun’s  gags are longer and Sarah’s dresses are  shorter than  Govinda and Karisma’s.  In fact so awful is their attempt  to fill their predecessor’s shoes that  audiences will  now look back with affection at the old version of the story which was no great shakes either.

Presumably that’s all Catholics do. Talent like Paresh, Ac hrekar(she  even scored as  just  a voice  in Ritesh Batra’s  ossibly  illogical. Sara Ali Khan belongs to a Catholic family. Yet she is shown rushing to the temple with a thali (designer-secularism?). Her father Jeffrey Rozario, played by poor  Paresh Rawal(poor, because when next he meets  PM Modi  how will he explain his  presence in something so stagnant subversive and anti-progressive?) keeps telling his mother Bharati Achrekar (in a Amazon-ordered wizened wig) to go light candles  .

Presumably that’s all Catholics do. Talent like Paresh, Achrekar (she even scored as  just  a voice in Ritesh Batra’s  Lunchbox), Rakesh Bed i(in a 4-minute  appearance where he plays  a stammerer for laughs), Johnny Lever, Rajpal Yadav is not just wasted but also ridiculed.Tujhko mirchi lagi, indeed.

The vigorous dancing of  the  neo-Coolie couple is no patch  on  Govinda and Karisma who were just fantastic  on their feet. Varun and Sara, I am afraid, look like poor copies in spite of trying so  hard to be feisty, funny and vigorous. Varun spends  the second-half impersonating  Mithun Chakraborty. It took me  while to  figure out that’s what your son  was  doing.  Most of the time I had no idea what he was doing, and why.

Incidentally, I have never seen so many empty suitcases posing as “luggage”  in scene  after scene. Empty suitcases to match empty minds? And no, the excuse that intellectualizing your content  is  doing your cinema disservice, won’t work. Absurdist cinema  is not akin to brainless cinema. You can’t slap on a slapstick by  pretending to be entertaining the masses. The “masses” have moved. So should you.

Sincerely yours

Subhash K Jha