bheja fry

Our good friend Vinay Pathak is hilarious in the low-budget hit Bheja Fry. Apparently he's looking at a lot of scripts now, but as seems to always be the case in Bollywood, most of them are copycats of his last outing. The brilliant part about Vinay's performance in Bheja Fry is that he brought back the essential note of realism to Hindi-film comedy--unlike his buddy Ranvir, who delivered the usual outsized performance that we've seen in the past with Javed Jaffrey's goof in Salaam Namaste or Boman Irani's roles in Munnabhai and Main Hoon Na. So writers should be looking to feed Vinay scripts like the original Gol Maal, which require terrific comic timing and charisma, but also the ability to portray a real character. Bollywood needs to remember that the audience shouldn't be constantly made painfully aware that it is watching a performance.

Here are my suggestions:

(1) Remake Gol Maal - Why not? Remakes are hot. Vinay is hot. And the guy could play that role with his eyebrows and (fake) mustache alone.

(2) A detective sequel to Bheja Fry - Take the phone gags Bharat Bhushan used to "help" reunite the couple in Bheja Fry to the next level, as his income tax inspector position leads him into a real sleuth mystery a la Inspector Clouseau.