Lage Raho Munnabhai did the impossible: it actually managed to be better than the first Munnabhai film in 2003 (which in any case was copied from a Hollywood film, Patch Adams).
Lage Raho Munnabhai was original, and enrapturing.
It’s all a “chemical locha” (aberration). Munnabhai meets Mahatma Gandhi and they get along like a house on fire. The prophetic leader from the past has a blast as he tells Munna how to deal with an avaricious builder (Boman Irani) and other ouch-casts of society.
It looks like Circuit has competition this time. Even as he remains a fiercely loyal Hanuman to his mentor Munna, Munna this time shifts his loyalties and attention to the lovely RJ Jahanvi and to Mahatma Gandhi, who keeps appearing in Munna’s day-time reverie to advise the benign gangster on love life and other vagaries of being human.
Munna and Circuit, arguably cinema’s most adorable and roguish reformists since Laurel and Hardy, go about the business of generating humour out of the pathos of the human condition. The sequences, all fiercely and famously path-breaking, have us in splits.
Watch the love-lorn Munnabhai answer a Gandhian quiz on a phone-in radio quiz with the help of kidnapped professors… it’s one of the most comically animated sequences seen in the movies of the new millennium.
To look at Lage Raho Munnabhai as a ‘serious comedy’ is to seriously undermine the motivations and impact of the series (and let’s face it, there’s no getting away from the Munna-Circuit jodi for the producer and director).
Playing the sweat-smart ruffians with hearts of cool, Sanjay Dutt and Arshad Warsi bring a chirpy enchantment to their roles. Their parts have hefty hearts. But there’s more. There’s an innocence and a desire to make the world a better place.
Though some of the music and jokes are derived from the first film, this time Hirani takes the duo further down the road of moralistic mirth to create what can easily be deemed the most significant satire in Indian cinema since Munnabhai MBBS.
This time Munna meets Mahatma Gandhi. It’s an interesting combination. While outwardly the two seem as disparate in time and personality as Sunil Dutt and Sanjay Dutt, both are in essence all heart and no guile.
The Munna-Mahatma dialogues sparkle with satirical wisdom, thanks in no small part to Dutt and Dilip Prabhavalkar (who plays Gandhiji with tongue-in-cheek conviction). The dialogues by Hirani and Abhijeet Joshi constantly probe the festering moral and social system of the nation without getting hysterical on homilies. The individual scenes make light of national issues without ever trivializing the cult of the conscience.
At heart-and boy, does this film have it in plenty!-Lage Raho Munnabhai is a parable on love and companionship. Whether it’s Munnabhai’s bonding with his faithful companion Circuit (watch the two actors turn that potentially mawkish sequence at the dockyard into something special) or Munna courting love (Balan) and Gandhism, the narrative dodges false notes by remaining sincere to the characters.
Every actor gets a chance to special in this enriching take of non-violent protest and radio-activity. But Dutt and Warsi go beyond. Sanjay Dutt proves again that he has shaped up into a fine performer who can mingle poignancy with satire the way Raj Kapoor did in those parables to innocence like Shri 420 and Awara, or like Sunil Dutt did in Milan and Meherbaan.
Warsi manages to steal some scenes from Dutt. That’s how effective he is! Surely he’s one of the finest young actors today. Vidya Balan is gloriously glamorous and likeable, though she could’ve toned down those expressions of coy contemporaneity that make her look like a model for cornflakes.
In fact, some of the emotional moments, like those between Jimmy Shergil and his screen-father Pariskshat Sahni, or that flamboyant wedding finale where the bride Diya Mirza tells the truth about her horoscope at the cost of turning her groom away, do not have the emotional impact which one thought they would.
Though a wee short of tears, Lage Raho Munnabhai goes a long way in creating an enduring and endearing parable on the importance of being earnest in a world of growing duplicity.
The narrative is so unfailingly heartwarming and the characters so full of human kindness, you wait for the plot to be weighed down by excessive self-importance.
The fall never happens. Lage Raho Munnabhai remains true to its characters till the end.
One of Munna’s favourite words is ‘daring’.
It must also be Raj Kumar Hirani’s favourite word. In a world of extravagant cynicism and rancour, he dares to dream of Gandhian peace.
When the aggressive Munna turns his other cheek, you wonder if Gandhian values have a place in our heart.
They most certainly do have a place in Hirani’s art. Shall we take it up from there?
Speaking on this landmark film, Raj Kumar Hirani said, “I wasn’t a huge Gandhian before making this film. But I started reading up on him for this film. It required a helluva lot of research. That’s when I discovered this amazing man. His simple, honest principles are eminently applicable today. Why do we wait for others to change the world? Why can’t you or I do it? I don’t claim to be anywhere near perfect. But I’ve strongly started believing in Gandhiji’s ideology. You know, I wasn’t scared of writing Munnabhai MBBS. But writing Lage Raho, where I had to bring in Mahatma Gandhi, was scary. What saved Gandhiji and my film from getting stressed was the humour. You know, Gandhiji was a very humorous man… But still, I took a big risk in doing a film where Gandhi was a character. Several actors, including Naseeruddin Shah, were auditioned for Gandhi’s role. We had spoken to Naseer. He was interested. But he got busy with Krissh. Then there was his own directorial venture. Then we thought of Surendra Rajan, who had played Gandhiji in Raj Santoshi’s Legend Of Bhagat Singh. Surendra had played the sweeper in Munnabhai MBBS. We finally zeroed in on this wonderful theatre and television actor Dilip Prabhavalkar for Gandhiji’s role. We sent Dilip’s pictures to the guy who had done Ben Kingsley’s makeup and he approved. Though Dilip had done his homework fully, he couldn’t get it right on the first day. We then let him be. We told him to stop aping Gandhiji, just be himself because the attire was enough to suggest whom he was playing.”
About turning the other cheek philosophy, Hirani said, “Many incidents in my film have really happened. Take that scene where the uncouth man keeps repeatedly spitting outside the neighbour’s door and the neighbour decides to clean the spit repeatedly until the other man is shamed into stopping… that actually happened to my mother-in-law. A neighbour used to throw eggshells in her garden. A couple were in dispute about buying a flat because, according to the expert, it wasn’t the correct location by the rules of vastu shastra. After seeing the film, the couple decided to give the vastu angle the slip. They’ve decided to go ahead and buy the flat. I don’t think the first film had this kind of impact. People are saying Lage Raho has gone far beyond MBBS. I’m not offering Gandhism as a full and final solution. But it’s better than the complete erosion of ideology in today’s society. I really need to prove myself beyond the series. Otherwise my well-wishers will turn around and ask, ‘Can he do anything else?’ But of course, Sanju, Arshad and I have a responsibility to carry forward the series. But Lage Raho … wasn’t a sequel. It’s an independent film. Thank God critics saw this to be an original script. But I need to get away from these two guys. I must say Sanju and Arshad worked very hard. In MBBS they had a readymade script to rely on. Here the script went through changes right till the end. Sanju’s contribution was immense. He was really charged by the role. I do have a comfort level with Sanju and Arshad. And it would be stupid to let go. But at the same time it would be stupid to hold on to them for the sake of the comfort. But let me tell you, I’m not scared of doing another sequel. When I did Munnabhai MBBS they said comedies don’t run. When I did a sequel to MBBS they said sequels don’t run. Now they’ll say sequel kar sakta hai, par serious film nahin kar sakta hai. What to do? I’m really not worried about the next Munnabhai film. I already see it in my mind.”