Coolie No.1 movie review: This Varun Dhawan and Sara Ali Khan starrer is an outdated remake

Murtuza Iqbal

It’s not necessary that what audiences liked in the 90s, they will like the same thing in 2020. So, why a cult film should be remade, and even if it is remade why narrate it in an outdated way?

Veteran filmmaker David Dhawan, who is known for directing some really good comedy films in the 90s and early 2000, is on a remake spree. In 2017, he remade his directorial Judwaa as Judwaa 2 with his son Varun Dhawan in the lead role. And now, after three years we have Coolie No. 1 remake which has been released on Amazon Prime Video.

The story of the film is the same, but writer Rumi Jaffrey has changed the screenplay a bit. However, that doesn’t mean that the screenplay is good. The writing is dull and apart from two to three scenes and the climax, there are hardly any sequences that would make you laugh out loud.

David Dhawan is a veteran filmmaker but here his narration looks outdated, and just to give the film a modern-day feel, they have used bright candy-floss type colours, heavy locations, and other stuff. The dialogues written by Farhad Samji aren’t funny. Also, body-shaming jokes, does that still make people laugh in 2020?

Talking about performances, Johny Lever stands out. He has only four to five scenes in the film but he steals the show and you wait to watch him more. You will surely laugh in the scenes featuring him. Varun Dhawan is strictly average. In many scenes, you will feel that he is trying to copy Govinda.

On the other hand, Sara Ali Khan is quite good and thankfully she doesn’t try to copy Karisma Kapoor and puts in her act forward. Paresh Rawal fails to recreate the magic of Kader Khan and his ‘Heaven on the Dock’ dialogue starts irritating after a point. Sahil Vaid and Shikha Talsania are okay in their respective roles, and Rajpal Yadav is wasted. Javed Jaffrey leaves a mark.

Coming to music, the songs are decent, and thankfully the recreated version of the songs Husn Hai Suhana and Mirchi Lagi Toh have not been ruined (audio).

Overall, Coolie No. 1 ends 2020 on a disappointing note. It’s not something that we expected from David Dhawan.

Ratings: 2/5

Watch the trailer here…