Jyoti (1981)

Hema Malini reprises some of her Seeta aur Geeta fierceness to whip some ass in this enjoyable drama in the last in series of Heroines that kick ass

Govind (Jeetendra) the son of Zamindar (Ashok Kumar) is a retard, he's fed pills that make him retarded by his stepmother Sunanda(Shashikala at her eyepopping best)

Her son Niranjan (Vijayendra Ghatge) constantly terrorises Govind whipping him , he also treats the local villagers harshly

Gauri (Hema Malini) a fierce knife wielding, whip lashing damsel stands up for the right of the poor vilagers much to the anger of Niranjan

Gauri wins the affection of Zaminder who takes a liking to her braveness and her willingness to satnd up aaginst his step son's tyranny, he proposes for her to be his daughter in law

Zamindar tells his wife Sunanda, who isn't too pleased about getting her son married to a lower class girl like Gauri, she contends that Gauri be married to Govind instead. Zaminder is hesitant at first but he goes along with the idea

On the day of the wedding when Gauri's father realises she's being married off to the retarded son, her father stops the wedding but Gauri persuades him otherwise and she and Govind marry


Meanwhile Niranjan falls for Mallika a dancer who along with Amirchand (Ajit) plan to rob him of his wealth


Following their marriage Gauri realises Niranjan and his mother run the household and maltreat Govind and they're in fact the reason for him becoming mentally retarded, she sets out to teach them a lesson


Watch as Jyoti takes matter into her hands, and goes about setting the house in order

Indeed as you might have noticed this movie is quite similar to Beta (1992) in the aspect of the daughter in law teaching her husbands relatives a lesson, here Hema Malini plays a role similar to that of Madhuri, major difference being that Hema kicked or should i say whipped some major butt.


An enjoyable film overall, I watched this film out of curiosity for the sake of one song (more on that later) and i love most of the cast too, its all in all a fun film, its slow in parts but the songs are great, overall its quite an enjoyable movie

Great soundtrack from Bappi Lahiri, this was a step away from his disco oreinted numbers, theres the fun 'Chidiya choon choon' pictuised on jeetendra where he sings 'Happy birthday to me' the quiet ballad 'sooni sej saja doon' and another sensual ballad 'angadai leke prem' but my favourite and infact the reason i watched the film is because of the 'Thoda resham lagta hai' song which gained immense popularity after it was sampled in the 2004 super smash R'n'B track 'Addictive' by Truth Hurts featuring Rakim ( see it embedded below)




Addictive



Generally i don't like when classics are remixed with pop/rock beats but this was a nicely done sample

Total Score: 5.5/10 ( an enjoyable drama with great songs)

Edited to add: Truth Hurt's Addictive was also inspired by UM110'S version of 'Thoda Resham Lagta Hai' titled Kaliyon Ka Chaman. Watch it here on Youtube

Thanks to Richard S. for the Information

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