Jaani Dost
Director: K. Raghavendra Rao
Year: 1983
Duration: 153 minutes
Music: Bappi Lahiri
Rating: 5.5
Trans:
Best Friends
Oh boy, where to begin with this one.
Bollywood in the 1980s to a large degree decided to leave subtlety and good
taste behind. Garish was in. Gaudy was in. Over the top was in. Logic was
lost in an attempt to just be big and brash. The action scenes were filled
with massive punches that could be heard in the next province and the dances
were ablaze with color, tacky costumes and thumping rhythms. In other words,
they could be great fun if you can put your brain and taste buds on hold for
two to three hours. This film was more ridiculous than a monkey and elephant
teaming up to save the day. Oh, wait that is exactly what this film has.
How is this for how silly this film could
be. One of the heroines is being held in a jail within a dungeon. There are
three guards. The other heroine throws three bananas to her monkey pal and
tells her to eat the bananas and toss the peel as the men come out to see
what the disturbance is. And sure enough, one after another they come out,
slip on the peel and get conked. They then go down and seduce two more guards
- one being a monkey. If this makes you wince, you should probably stay
very far away from this film. But every now and then I get in the mood for
brainless fun and turn to some old Bollywood films.
The film has a first class cast. All big
stars at the time. There is Dharmendra, Parveen Babi, Jeetendra and Sridevi
as our heroes and heroines and on the other side of the ledger we have Amjad
Khan, Kader Khan and Shakti Kapoor. Three legendary movie villains.
And just for the hell of it there are two well-known Bollywood Western actors,
Bob Cristo and Tom Alter as thugs who get the hell beaten out of them. And
one other worth mentioning, Silk Smitha, who does a smoldering item number.
There is a plot within all the fighting
and musical numbers. In fact, way too much plot in its 140-minute running
time. An insane amount of twists and turns. You will need to see a chiropractor
afterwards. Ok. Here is a quickie. A Prince of a small Indian state is told
that the government is coming for his territory and jewels. So he hops on
a train with his very young son to hide the jewels, but he is betrayed by
a family friend and his partner, Kader and Amjad. The Prince is killed on
the train and his young son tossed off. The boy, Veeru, survives and becomes
friends with an orphan, Raju, and they decide to move to the city. Raju works
as a shoeshine boy so that Veera can go to school. Meanwhile back at his home,
his mother gives birth to a girl, Meena. And if you have seen many old Bollywood
films, you know where this is going.
Raju grows up to be Dharmendra, a rough
tough uneducated truck driver. Veeru grows up to be Jeetendra, a man of mystery
- perhaps a conman, perhaps a jewel thief, perhaps a smuggler, perhaps none
of these. And Meena is Parveen who grows up with her mother and unknowingly
the two men who killed her father. Enter only the delightful Sridevi who runs
a karate class for women and attacks Veeru when she thinks he has manhandled
a woman. They become a couple as do Raju and Meena when he saves her from
a gang of motorcycle drivers. Kapow, bang, zoom. Everything is in place for
melodrama, lots of fisticuffs, romance, songs, monkeys, disguises, revenge
and reunion. Not for those of discriminating taste. Clearly, not a problem
of mine.
