Five Best Masala Movies of Bollywood

In the Good Old days when Men were Men and the only form of entertainment in India was good old’ Doordarshan and the local cinema, life for movie-goers was much simpler. We had the “true Masala Movie” which had 3 hours worth of song-and-dance sequences , multi-talented hero, dishum-dishum and melodrama . The director generally wanted the end result to be a cinematic masterpiece but it usually ended up looking a bit over-the-top. Nevertheless these were mostly entertaning and harmless.

But these days such movies are a dying breed with alien concepts like “socially relevant topics”, “parallel cinema” , “bold movies” or the like infiltrating to the very heart of Bollywood. Some of the movies are restricted to 2 hours in length! We are actually getting to see movies without a single song-and-dance sequence! Blasphemy!

Now the only masala movies that are still around the faux-masala movies like “Main Hoon Na “ or “Bunty and Bubly “ which have all the characteristics but cannot be called as such because even the directors acknowledge that are meant to imitate the true masala movies and are even promoted as such . In fact the only recent True Masala movie I’ve seen is “Garv Pride and honour”….oh yes , the masala movie should also have a fearsome and awe-inspiring title ( Sholay (Flames) , Shaan(Pride) , Waqt Hamara Hai (The time is ours) or my personal favourite… Jaanbaaz)

Garv-Pride and honour

Salman Khans as the Indian Dirty Harry-Shoot first , ask questions later

Menacing one-liners- “C.M sahib , is umer main haddi toot jate hain , to asane se nahi judte hain “ ( Broken bones don’t mend easily at this age )..and than the C.M gets kicked in the chest.

• Shilpa Shetty as the bar dancer with a heart of gold

To show the would-be foe the his days are numbered , Salman does a weird gesture with his hands

Single handily takes out the villain inside his own hideout with his bare hands

Mohra (The pawn)

The pinnacle of 90s masala movies . Akshay Kumar as the Good Cop. like in all masala movies, his father- another police inspector was shot down by the bad guys. In comes Vishal (Shetty), whose sister was cruelly raped and murdered by the goons. The daughter of the Jailor, Roma (Raveena) supposedly does journalism . Naseeruddin Shah as the one who inspires Shetty to take revenge .

meaningless fight scenes with tons of fake blood.

Mandatory item numbers-Mast Mast ( Remember how Ravenna got labelled as the “Mast mast girl??) and of course “Tip Tip Barish “

Costume designing at its very best with both heroes in the ubiquitous white sneakers , blue jeans and open shirts .

Impossible fight sequences with both heroes jumping out of exploding buildings , moving buses , etc .

An impressive cast of villans , mouthing bombastic dialogues : Gulshan Grover, Raza Murad, Paresh Rawal …’’Tum to bomb nahi sex-bomb ho’’

Sholay (Flames)

The mother of all Masala Movies . Our very own Spaghetti western ( or should I be Tandoori western ?). Two convicts and small time crooks (Amitabh and Dharmendra) are picked by Thakur (Sanjeev Kumar), a former police officer, to seek vengeance on the dangerous bandit Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan) because he killed all of Thakur's family (except a daughter-in-law) and maimed Thakur for life.

Over-the-top performances by almost everyone in most of the scenes.

End-of-movie Dance In The Villains Den that reminds us that the bad guy is soon going to reach an unpleasant end.

Intermingled love stories

Action sequences

Of course who could forget the Manly Dialouges .. “Yeh ahhat nahin , phansi kke phanda hain!”( 'These aren't arms, they're your noose').

”Yeh haat mujhe de Thakur!”(Give me your hand Thakur !)

Who can ever forget Amjad Khan as Gabbar Singh

Shaan ( Pride)

DSP Shiv Kumar (Sunil Dutt) is police officer who lives with his wife (Raakhee), a son, and two brothers, Ravi (Shashi Kapoor), and Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan), who are con-men, and will anything for a quick buck. When Shiv Kumar is killed, his wife widowed, Ravi and Vijay give up their non-chalant way of life, to find out who killed their brother, and avenge his death. Little do they know that the very forces that assist them now, will turn them in to the man who killed their brother - none other than the seemingly invincible Shakal (Kulbhushan Kharbanda).

Shakal would give any James Bond villan a run for their money… He even had a pet Alligator to whom he would feed his unsuspecting foes

The best End-of-movie Dance In The Villains Den ever…”Yamma Yamma !”

Some genuinely good action sequence…they way Sunil Dutt gets captured , the helicopter chase.

Karan Arjun

Rebirth to the Max! After sending Karan and Arjun (Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan) to their makers in typical filmi isthlye , Evil Villain ( Amresh Puri) though he could lead the easy life…but little did he realise that he would have to face them again in their reincarnated forms .

Villain meets his own end in the same hideous manner

Reincarnations are born at the same time the two heroes meet their premature end

Flashbacks of the previous lives in negative

Kajols infamous dance in the stables

Inane dialogues - ”Thakur to Gayo !”(Thakur is going to get it !)

Others:

Waqt Hamara Hai

Qurbani

Jaanbaaz

Jigar

p.s. For reasons mentioned above , Bunty aur Babliand Main hoon Na “ cannot be considered as True Masala Movies, that’s why I haven’t included them .

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We all watch movies, some of us like watching movies, some love them, and some just watch them for fun. We have different purposes of watching movies but every time we watch a movie we put in at least 5 minutes for discussing the pros and cons of the movie. You won’t be surprised if I put it this way, “more than 60% of movies that get released have been masala movies” (A masala movie is a movie which contains all possible aspects of a conventional movie) and the truth becomes more interesting when we find that most number of these masala movies have done good at the box office.

Here I have tried to bring out few of the all time great masala movies(some of these are even close to my heart).

1. Amar Akbar Anthony(1977):

Director: Manmohan Desai

Star cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Vinod Khanna, Rishi Kapoor, Parveen Babi, Shabana Aazmi, Neetu Singh, Pran, Jeevan and Nirupa Roy

Music: Laxmikant-Pyarelal

You can’t get a better masala movie than this, 3 heroes in their bachpan with parents in a happy family, misfortune making them separate from each other and the 3 becoming policeman (Amar-Vinod Khanna), Kawwal (Akbar-Rishi Kapoor) and Gunda (Anthony-Amitabh Bachchan). Fortune brings them together at different stages of their life and in the end its tyical bollywood dhishum dhishum(police force coming in the last is mandatory) and finally their serendipity speaks with them and the family is once again united(with extra bonus of 3 Bahu). Laxmikant-Pyarelal’s music has been top class in this movie; every single song be it “Parda hai parda .” or “Hamko tumse ho gaya hai .” or “My name is Anthony.” or 'Taiyyab Ali pyar ka dushman .' has fitted to the conditions perfectly. This movie has emotions, tragedy, love, comedy, story(obviously) and dhishum dhishum, in all a complete masala movie.

2. Main hoon na(2004)

Director: Farah Khan

Star cast: Shahrukh Khan, Sushmita Sen, Zayed Khan, Amrita Rao, Suniel Shetty, Boman Irani

Music: Anu Malik

This is what can be said as a perfect example of “Modern Masala Movie”. This movie has the complete masala for today’s generation. Action, sentiments, love, tragedy and comedy were significant parts of this movie. Another aspect of a masala movie is “its hero can do anything, yes you read it right, ANYTHING”, as here the lead hero beats 2600 CC Mahindra Scorpio by a cycle rikshaw. Anu malik’s music is good in this movie, nothing to mention that he got the filmfare award for this movie and Sonu Nigam got best singer for “Main hoon na…”. Few characters have been portrayed just in order to put proper masala, but a great masala movie to watch.

3. Kishan Kanhaiya(1990)

Director: Rakesh Roshan

Star cast: Anil Kapoor, Madhuri Dixit, Shilpa Shirodkar, Bindu, Kader Khan

Music: Rajesh Roshan

One of the most powerful storyline one can think of; Anil Kapoor doing justice with both the performances; Good support from other actors, and good music from Rajesh Roshan made this movies a super-hit in the year 1990.

4. Jeete hai shan se(1988)

Director: Kawal Sharma

Star cast: Mithun Chakravarti, Govinda, Sanjay Dutt, Mandakini, Vijeyta Pandit, Danny

Music: Anu Malik

Apart from having all the masala, this movie has its unique feature which makes it a bit different from other masala movies and the feature is its “Dialogue delivery” Dialogues have been spoken in most artificial way, nowhere they are close to reality. Another great thing about this melodrama is “it has a separate scene and a song for each hero’s entry”. Mithun Da making his entry with a fight and then singing “Salaam seth, salaam seth.” in Anu Malik’s voice is entertaining enough for the audience.

5. Farishtey(1991)

Director: Anil Sharma

Star cast: Dharmendra, Vinod Khanna, Rajnikant, Jayaprada, Sridevi, Sadashiv Amrapurkar

Music: Laxmikant Pyarelal

One more feature of masala movies over the time have been its star cast. Most of the masala movies don’t have a single hero in the movie(More than one hero is a must, preferably 3). This movie is an action-masala movie(more action oriented) but covers all aspects; even it has a song full of jingoism, “Jhanda uncha rahe hamara…” A complete masala movie to watch.

There have been few other efforts and I can’t stop mentioning their names.

Tridev(1989)

Mr. India(1987)

Tahlaka(1992)

Hum(1991)

Himmatwala(1983)

Yaadon ki Baarat(1973)

A masala movie is actually a combination of emotions, tragedy, love, comedy, story(obviously) and action in right proportion. And when you have too many things to fit in a small box it becomes difficult sometimes, here I thank the entire producers, directors who have given us these different shades in just one package and made our lives full of entertainment.

Your valuable comments are most welcome .

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