Mawaali (1983)

Second film in line for Sridevipalooza is Mawaali (Loafer) this is yet another film where Sridevi didn't get much to do, but these films still helped lay foundations for her status as the No.1 heroine of the '80's she was to become

Mr Goyal (Sreeram Lagoo) lives in his wealthy mansion with his gorgeous daughter Nisha (Jaya Prada) & relatives from hell Ajit (Kader Khan), Shobha (Aruna Irani) & their son Ranjit (Shakti kapoor)

Ajit is one of the trustees of Mr Goyal's business, he carries out dodgy deals but Ramesh (Jeetendra) an honest employee always restores things

Check out that highly volumised hair

When Ramesh falls for Nisha, Ajit isn't too pleased as he wants his son to marry Nisha & hopefully become heir to Mr Goyal's fortune. When Mr Goyal hears about Nisha's romance with Ramesh , he's none too pleased with the news given his status as a labourer at his factory, as a result Ramesh is fired

One night while rushing to her father's room following a huge scream let out by her dad, Nisha bumps into who she thinks is Ramesh, he hurries out immediately. Upon arriving at her fathers room Nisha realises he's dead and none other than Ramesh is linked to the crime

During the court trial Ramesh pleads his innocence but Nisha's claim that she saw him on the night leads to him being convicted and sent to prison to await death at the gallows

the utterly beautiful Jaya Prada, what a face

In prison Ramesh is surprised when he finds a doppelgänger of himself Gangu

Did Ramesh (or should we assume its Gangu) really kill Mr Goyal? If not who did? What exactly was he doing at Nisha's house at that time of night?

I was tempted to describe this film as camp, but then camp is too kind a word to describe this outrageously wacky film, this film can only be fun if you have a sense of humour to appreciate the outrageous, the editing is bad, the wafer thin plot full of holes bigger than a colander dish manages to stretch itself out till just under 3 hours.

In fact i was wondering whether to bother writing this up or not but i conjured up the courage, it just had to be done, these films whether we like it or not are a part of Hindi film industry, they drew in the crowds and became blockbusters while gems like The Burning train, and many other great films failed miserably. Thus for all the abuse and shtick 80's bollywod gets, seems the audiences were the ones affecting the demand.

Just like in Justice Chaudhury which i reveiwed yesterday, Sridevi's presence is felt only in the song and dance numbers and in fact that's the only thing i enjoyed about this film, indeed Bappi Lahiri's folky disco type tunes must have been part of the major draw for audiences

Rumour has it both Jaya & Sridevi couldn't stand each other, there are a couple of stories i've heard especially the one below, which according to imdb goes like this

"Sridevi and Jaya Prada didn't exchange a word during the shooting of the eight or nine films they co-starred in. While shooting "Maqsad", their co-stars Rajesh Khanna and Jeetendra apparently locked the two women up in the same room. An hour later when they peeped in, they saw them sitting quietly in two corners of the room"

Can anyone confirm how true the above might be, i'll really like to know

As usual the music in these southern style films are always hilarious from the fun 'baap ki kasam' & 'rama rama rama re' the hilarious 'Jhopdi mein charli' with lyrics such as 'A cot in a hut is nothing without a man in it' the song i've chosen to embed today is the whacky 'Ek , do, teen, char' i guess this song and the picturization pretty much sums up this movie

and of course the highly catchy 'Ui Amma Ui Amma (Mushkil yeh kya ho gayi)' which has recently been gaining popularity due to the 'Oohh la la tu hai meri fantasy'song from the 'The Dirty Picture' movie sampling it.

Paisa vasool rating: 4/10

Buy the dvd here