Chhoti Si Baat (1975)

Cast : Ashok Kumar

Amol Palekar

G. Asrani

Vidya Sinha

Genre : Comedy / Romance

Director : Basu Chatterjee

Rating : 7/10

I think I’ve had enough of that Bollywood-is-full-of-copy-cats crap. Most people say that it isn’t even worth watching a Bollywood movie these days due to their unimaginative plots and in some corner of my heart, maybe, even I too feel the same (one of the reasons why we haven’t reviewed any Hindi movie yet). So finally I set about to review one and I can’t think of a better film than this one.

I watched this one recently and I secretly beam with pride when I announce that Will Smith’s much loved “Hitch” was loosely copied from this Bollywood movie. Actually you can even call “Hitch” just a sub-plot of this film.

It revolves around the life of one Arun (Amol Palekar, as lovable and brilliant as ever) who, besides having other youth related problems, has the most talked about problem among men… women! He is truly, madly, deeply and a bit stupidly in love with one Prabha (Vidya Sinha, manages to look like the girl everyone wants to take home to their mothers). As if his own cowardice in expressing his love is not enough, an anti-hero (superbly portrayed by Asrani) is thrown in. He almost always sweeps the girl off her feet before our lovelorn hero. Enters Col. Julius Nagendranath Wilfred Singh (Ashok Kumar, pointless and needless to say that he was brilliant). He becomes our Romeo’s mentor and helps him completely turn his attitude (towards his life and his love) around.

With so many sequences showing Arun’s shorthand in love and thereafter the whole training and grooming he receives, makes this movie one of the best comedies ever made in India. Simply put, with such a lovely, interesting and original story in hand Basu Chatterjee had very little to do in direction (obviously, the cast took care of the rest). Though the screenplay he wrote is incomparable, he deserves all the applause.

Enough has been said about the cast already. It’s very fortunate that Basu had India’s most underrated actor (Amol Palekar) and India’s most loved and mimicked actors (Asrani and Ashok Kumar) to work with. Nobody could’ve portrayed Arun better than Palekar (we’ve kinda grown up loving to watch Amol do these kinds of roles). Then, when the colonel’s name was mentioned in the film, I was kinda expecting that it would be Ashok Kumar (imagine my delight when it really turned out to be that way!). As of Asrani, he was a nice surprise (no one can imagine a girl to be impressed by Asrani, at least I didn’t, and that’s one reason why he was impressive). The title track of the movie is quite catchy too (I hummed it for almost a week).

It’s definitely a watch able (in fact enjoyable) flick. It’s highly improbable that you will ever get a chance to see it (guess I was really lucky to chance upon it while channel surfing), but if you do get lucky, don’t miss this one.