Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro

Two simple photographers, trying to eke out an honest living, caught in a web of scandal and deceit.

Fantastic direction, outstanding plot, brilliant script, phenomenal casting and amazing acting. This movie has you laughing till the last scene, which is when the laughter is wrenched from your throat!

The movie has great attention to detail. For example, the scene when monkey is being photographed, look into the mirror in his hand. You actually see Tarneja in a checked jacket and gun in hand. Which leads to the single biggest flaw: no gunshot heard?

But that may be forgiven. The comedy is unending!!! For example, the Dhritrashtra, still blind, saying "This is too much! Yeh Akbar kahaan se aa gaya?"... Or Tarneja and Ahuja entering the Mahabharat in complete costumes, but still wearing their specs and sunglasses respectively! That, to my mind, is the single longest comic scene in Hindi cinema!

The laughs do not stop!!! It stays, to date, the best tragi-comedy ever!

Quite apart from its social satire, unimaginably ahead of its time for the dour early '80's Delhi, JBDY managed to bring together a slew of talent, Shah(s), Baswani, Kapoor, and of course the inimitable Puri 'Ahuja'. Folks over at NFDC still take the movie apart frame by frame, deconstructing its topical references and attempt to interpolate a social conscience to it. More than its concluding 'Draupadi vastraharan' scene, symbolic of the wretched disrobing of the Indian polity however, the film managed to make me cry out loud with laughter even as an impressionable twelve year old, merely for its slapstick content. This is a movie which gets better with every viewing, and reveals slick, symbolic and subversive undertones worthy of Kundan Shah's maverick vision.

Rib-tickling, side-splitting .. but also cynical, intelligent, and very, very dark. Comedy as it should be and so very rarely is. Corrupt politicians in cahoots with thieving contractors, their scheming rivals and their inept secretaries ... add two bumbling, idealistic, naive young photographers in the 'right' place at the 'right' time ..... throw 'em all together and all hell breaks loose, and boy is it hilarious!! I've seen this several times and never failed to collapse in helpless fits of laughter. Wonder why they don't make them like this anymore, and wish they did!

They've never quite managed to make a movie like this one. Naseeruddin Shah and Ravi Vaswani play photographers caught in a messy affair involving corrupt politicians, wicked businessmen, canny journalists (and some hammy actors). Giving director Kundan Shah (who has, surprising, gone on to the make some of the most awful films of the last decade) the chance to unleash his brilliant satire. He hits all his targets. Satish Shah is hilarious as a dead body on roller skates, and the 'Disrobing of Draupadi' scene in the theatre is one of the funniest ever shot. Like the rest of the film, it could have been cringe-inducingly-awful. If it weren't so funny, that is.

This was a wonderful comedy, no cheap humor, no poor jokes, just a simple inexpensive movie made with a great script, good jokes and wonderful actors. The scene at the theater where the mahabharat is being enacted is by far the funniest 15 minutes in the history of Indian Cinema. A must see for everyone.