5 Great Buddy Movies

The theme of Friendship has been explored deep and wide in Hindi films, and with Archie's Cards presents Friendship Day around the corner (wait, it has passed you say? ah....never mind) we thought that we should get into the geist of the zeit and write about our favourite filmy friendships.

5. Kachche Dhaage

Nothing says 'Best Friends' like being chained together and running on a train track
Kachche Dhaage was a good film, and although the two main leads are 'Step Brothers', who says brothers can't be friends. The film used the formulaic 'odd pair' to good effect. Ajay Devgan played a rustic smuggler and Saif Ali Khan was some random guy in a coat from the city.

It was a pre-Dil Chahta Hai Saif Ali Khan, and yet he was successful in not spoiling the movie. Ajay Devgan was a pre-Rohit Shetty Ajay Devgan, and hence he brooded and delivered lines in dead-pan humour to perfection.

Much of the film has the odd couple being on the run from the law and overcoming their differences, there were a couple of heroines too perhaps in the film, but they are immaterial. The plot was cliched and all its synonyms in the thesaurus, and yet, this movie is immensely entertaining and the friendship between the leads was hilarious.

4. Main Khiladi Tu Anari



This movie came at a time when Akshay Kumar's Khiladi-dom was ascending and a long haired weird voiced son-of-a-cricketer was trying hard to prove that he is a Ashiq Awara, in this film he played a caricature of himself. And despite being a rip-off from a mediocre hollywood flick, the movie worked. Because it was the early 90s, and because of this song


Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan worked together again in many films with limited to no success (most recently in Tashan), thankfully they made this film BEFORE making the other atrocities.

3. Do Aur Do Paanch

If you are aware of this comics



then you would be able to understand the measure of the hilarity of this film


much of which was two thieves (and not spies, alas, for that would have made this film even more awesome) trying to out-do each other. They are not friends in the strictest sense of the word, but then haven't you often had the desire to cause bodily harm to your buddies and laugh about it later.

2. Dil Chahta Hai

While on the verge of completing this list, I have come to realize that three of the five movies mentioned here feature Saif Ali Khan. I tell myself that it is only a weird coincidence and nothing else, and move on to a film that made Bromance cool.


The film was about three (or two out of three) rich-kids going through a phase of forced-growing up (something that the director Farhan Akhtar, himself a rich-kid, must have experienced while making his first film) and what made it work was that the three guys on screen could have been any three guys, and not necessarily kids who take sudden vacations to Goa or get their father's businesses handed over to them. The film is good, because all of us (and all of us) can relate to at least some part of the camaraderie shared by the trio.

1. Sholay


I am tempted to write '...enough said' and leave it at that, but I have done that before. This time I shall try and wax eloquent about the most celebrated hindi film friendship of all time.

Friends With Guns And Explosions in Background, almost like Contra
These two are friends who are aware of each other's foibles and will do all in their capacity to pull each others' legs


and yet they can (and in this case literally) give their life for each other (Vijay's death in Sholay was quite pointless, but we will come to that in some other post). The movie gave us the best dialogues about friendship ('Ghadi Ghadi drama kartaa hai') and also give friendship it's best known anthem


There have been other good films about friendship (Dostana, Yaarana and many others) but let us for the present leave their tales for another time.


3 comments:

{ Bhavya } at: August 8, 2012 at 8:26 AM said...

where is Zindagi na milegi dobara
much better than Kacche dhaage and
Main khiladi tu Anari at least

{ Abhi } at: August 8, 2012 at 8:38 AM said...

Yaarana (Amitabh and Amjad Khan) and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara should be here in place of Kachche Dhaage and Main Khiladi Tu Anari

{ Prachi } at: August 9, 2012 at 12:04 AM said...

Dosti (1964) is missing :)

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