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

Justice Chaudhury (1983)

Kicking off Sridevipalooza is Justice Chaudhury, Sridevi doesn't get to do much in this acting wise, but as a fan you'll get your money's worth Sridevi-wise with lots of super fun songs as well as dance routines

Honest and upright Justice Chaudhury (Jeetendra) gets in the bad books of Jai Singh (Shakti Kapoor) when he gets his doppleganger brother Shankar sent to the gallows

Suave looking Justice Chaudhury

Jai plots to get back at Justice Chaudhury by ruining his reputation, to do this he hires struggling mechanic Ramu ( Jeetendra) to carry out his shady plans for him in return for cold hard cash. Ramu hopes the money he makes would help buy a mansion of dreams for his mother Radha (Hema Malini), who is spending time in Jail for a crime he had committed as a child, when he had murdered the man who attempted raping her

He meets and falls for Rekha (Sridevi), and in the usual filmi way she plays hard to get at first, but then eventually falls in love with him, over time she comes to know of his shady deeds and tries to make him see the error of his ways, arguing his mom won't be able to find peace once she finds out he had gained the money to buy her mansion of dreams through dishonest means

Justice Chaudhury on the other hand is burdened by his disabled daughter Laxmi's (Debashree Roy) plight to find a husband, this changes when Kiran (Raj kiran) takes a liking to her, they both get married and Kiran turns out to be a trap by Jai Singh in order to get Justice Chaudhury to release yet another one of his brother's who's been tried at the court of law

When Justice Chaudhury refuses to release Jai Singh's brother, Kiran divorces Laxmi which obviously is a taint on Justice's reputation/honour. When Kailash (Kader Khan), another Justice Chaudhury hater realises Ramu is Justice Chaudhury's son, he alerts Ramu that Justice Chaudhary is his father and tells him how he had impreganted his mother Radha and then left

Young Justice Chaudhary and Radha

Ramu is furious and is hell bent on avenging the injustice done to his mother, he disguises as Justice Chaudhury and sets up Justice's son Ramesh (Arun Govil) for murder

Ramesh is brought to the court of the law and none other than his father Justice Chaudhury must decide the case

Will he bend the law for his son or will he be his usual upright self? Did Justice really do the dirt on Ramu's mother or is there a reason why she ended up raising him alone?

This is one of my all time favourite Jeetendra films, he shines and is believable in his dual role as Justice and Ramu, he played both parts with conviction albeit in a very melodramatic kind of way, yet still he was convincing as both the father and son, plus the make up applied to age him was not over the top. The soap opera style sub plot after sub plot, as well as twists and flashbacks though a bit tiring after a while, made this film highly enjoyable to watch for me, i couldn't wait to see what twist or tale would be introduced next, overall i'd say Justice Chaudhury is a very entertaining flick with a stronger storyline than all the other southern style films Jeetendra did in the 80's like Himmatwala.

As for Sridevi as I've said at the beginning of this post, she doesn't get to do much apart from the Song and dance numbers, which I have to say are a treat if you're a fan

Other things i loved about Justice Chaudhury are

Jeetendra & Sridevi of course

lots of sychronised dance steps

some cool even if doll house like interiors


A sharp Suited and rather well dressed villain

a cool collection of sunglasses Jeetendra wears in the film

the psychedelic style sets of 'Mujhe kya hua' with giant sea shells with disco lights attached

And of course Bappi Lahiri's music made this film all the nmore enjoyable, from the sweet 'Laxmi o Laxmi' and 'Zindagi Anmol' to my three favourites

the sexy 'mujhe kya hua' watch as Sridevi and Jeetendra hug, and writhe seductively amidst psychedelic sea shell sets i've included the video below with subtitles

The aerobic style dance moves as well as the pure awesome double entendre lyrics in 'saath mere aaoge'

and not forgetting the bollywood disco classic 'Mamma mia'

Bappi Lahiri Zindabad

Paisa Vasool rating: 7/10, even Jeetendra gives it the thumbs up

Laadla (1994)

Long before Meryl Streep played Miranda Prestley in Devil wears Prada there was Sridevi as a no nonsense woman in this moderately entertaining drama

Sheetal Jetley (Sridevi) is a high powered, high achiever, she hates being second in life, the top is the utmost position for her and she strives for this always, She runs her father's company Sheetal's textiles making it the Number 1


One day she comes across Raju (Anil Kapoor), the two are involved in an arguement culminating in him telling her that women should be coy and men be bold


A rival company fronted by Suryadev (Prem Chopra) his son (Monish Behl) and his brother (Paresh Rawal) are jealous of Sheetal's success in leading her father's company to the top, they hatch a plan to get her married to Monish so that they can merge and then eventually take over the company, Sheetal gives them the cold shoulder,this makes them vengeful

Raju saves Sheetal's Dad from villains one day and as a reward he's employed by Sheetal's dad as Chief mechanic in Sheetal Textile Industries, while there Raju he meets and falls for Kaajal (Raveena Tandon)


Raju also gathers a huge following and the workers soon start protesting against the demands of Sheetal. When Raju challenges her ego in front of the workers Sheetal is gutted and plans to avenge his actions by marrying him out of spite, even though she knows he's in love with Kaajal

She manipulates his crippled mother Farida Jalal to get him married to her only, she also bullies her into making Raju come live with her at her place

Raju is releuctant about leaving his mother but she insists and he gets married to her and he promises to come back after teaching her a lesson

When they get married she begins torturing Raj by refusing to have sex with him, she also keeps him as her subordinate, through all this she begins breaking Raju's assertive personality

Meanwhile Mr Bhandari (Shakti Kapoor) who despises Sheila's manipulative ways makes allies with Suryadev's company, together they plan on defaming Sheetal Industries thereby knocking it off the top

Would they be successful? How much more of Sheila's manipulation would Raju be able to take? What would be the end of Sheila, would she die a filmi type bad girl death or would she li=ve to realise the errors(?) of her ways? Watch Laadla to find out

This is without doubt one of Sridevi's finest roles, given the rampant and in fact very true complaints of the lack of strong female characters in bollywood films, Sheetal's role in Laadla (Darling) was a very interesting one, albeit the fact that her character was cast in a negative light, Sridevi shines and gives and excellent performance as Sheetal.


The downsides and in fact the major reason why this interesting drama loses points with me is the fact that Sheetal's egomaniac, inconsiderate attitude was attributed to her education in a western country, in that sense the west is painted as an evil place and in the end when she finally realises the error of her ways she's starts dressing in a Sari (wrong, very wrong). I thought such moral lines were something movies like Jab Jab phool Khile in the '60s sought to convey, and surely film director's in the '90's would have been way enlightened than use such moral codes. At the heart of the film is that which Raju's character had coveyed to Sheetal that men should be bold and women coy (definitely not one i agree with)

A great point akbarnali an imdb commenter makes about Sridevi's role as Sheetal in Laadla is that it paved the way for the bollywood anti-heroine such as that of Kajol in Gupt, Manisha in Dil se & Yugpurush, Juhi Chawla in Arjun Pandit etc

Sridevi was stylish though and she looked fierce in her corporate skirt suits and bobbed hair with bangs

Very Coco Channelesque with the pearls and all


Gotta love that fringe

And of course this film is famous for Sridevi's 'understand, You better understand' dialogue after which she clicks her fingers, you can see it here around the 2.28 mark

'Understand, you better understand'

The music by Anand Milind is good among my favourites are the very 90's romance sounds of 'Meri Dhadkan suno' the infectious 'Ladki hai kya' the heavy rhythms of 'Mere Ghulam' the sentimental 'Teri Ungli Pakadke' which celebrtaes the joy of motherhood and the atypical Sridevi Anil Kapoor seductive song 'Dhak Dhak Dil Dhadak'


Total Score: 6/10 ( An enjoyable even if somewhat flawed moral drama)

Laadla is available with English Subtitles on Youtube in 17 parts

Edited to add
Laadla is a remake of a 1992 Telugu movie called Gharaana Mogudu

Also the late Divya Bharati is said to have been playing the role of Sheetal until her sad and untimely death caused Sridevi to replace her, below is some of the scene's Divya shot, what an awesome actress she is, I wonder what this film would have been like with her as Sheetal