Daily Times

David Dhawan at his peak is a hard act to follow. The master of madcap cinema, whose favourite playing field remained farce and the ridiculous, Dhawan had the uncanny ability to make every scene a rib tickler. With generous help from Kader Khan’s laugh-a-minute dialogues and the nimble-footed Govinda’s spot-on comic timings, you were never given a chance to examine the script – there wasn’t any – or the lack of coherence. We were in for the ride, and the breathless spontaneity carried you along. It is that spontaneity you miss desperately in

Coolie No 1, Dhawan’s rehash of his hit from quarter of a century ago. And the original was never a perfect product in the first place but it was always light on its feet.

Kader Khan’s Seth Hoshiyarchand is now Goa hotelier Jeffery Rozario whose only dream is to find a stinking rich husband for his daughter Sarah (Sara Ali Khan). For some reason, he is made to talk in rhyme, with the first line being ‘Heaven on the Docks man’. It grates on your ear the first time he says it and never gets better

The director’s son, actor Varun Dhawan, is the one answering to the call of ‘Aaaeee Coolie’ this time round. Senior Dhawan doesn’t change the story, offers no surprises for those of us who went to a single-screen theatre to catch the original. Instead, he gives his scenery a lick of paint, adds a flashy wardrobe and voila, a 1995 hit is ready for an all-new audience.

Kader Khan’s Seth Hoshiyarchand is now Goa hotelier Jeffery Rozario (Paresh Rawal) whose only dream is to find a stinking rich husband for his daughter Sarah (Sara Ali Khan). For some reason, he is made to talk in rhyme, with the first line being ‘Heaven on the Docks man’. It grates on your ear the first time he says it and never gets better.

Rozario, in his search for the richest man in the country for his daughter, insults the matchmaker Jai Kishen (Jaaved Jaffrey, a 2020 version of Sadashiv Amrapurkar’s Shadiram Gharjode) who promises to avenge the insult. He brings in a railway porter Raju (Varun Dhawan) to play the rich suitor Kunwar Raj Pratap Singh. Blinded by the promise of immense wealth, Rozario gets Raju married to his daughter, but soon realises everything is not what it seems. In order to throw him off the scent, Raju cooks up the story of having a twin, adding more confusion to an already overflowing plot.