23: Coolie No. 1 | Varun Dhawan | Sara Ali Khan | Paresh Rawal

A remake of 1995 Govinda and Karisma Kapoor starrer by the same name, Coolie No. 1 is directed by David Dhawan who also directed the original. Starring Varun Dhawan (as Raju Coolie and Kuwar Raj Pratap Singh) and Sara Ali Khan (Sarah Rozzario) in lead roles, the film is old wine in new bottle with both Varun and Sara adding their own tadka, but it doesn't taste anything like the original. Not to say that original was a cult in any way but for that era, it kind of worked with Govinda's effortless comic timing and wit. Switch to 2020, I'm sorry but such blatant frame-to-frame remakes aren't going to work. It's way too over-the-top for today's audiences and proves that not everything can be recycled. Even the music that has been remixed, it would have been best left untouched. The supporting cast includes Paresh Rawal (Jeffery Rozzario), Jaaved Jaffery (Pandit Jai Kishen), Shikha Talsania (Anjali Rozzario), Sahil Vaid (Deepak) and Rajpal Yadav (Pinto) and other than Rawal, no one brings anything new to the table that's worth mentioning. While Rumi Jaffery's screenplay has no head and tail that's evident from highly misplaced songs and abrupt action sequences that come in out of the blue, it's Farhad Samji's utterly ridiculous and mindless dialogues that are a put-off. If anything is good, it's perhaps the fact that Coolie No.1 doesn't have anything vulgar, no cuss words, no double meaning jokes, so it can be well enjoyed with your family. But mind you, don't put any logic into it because they didn't. The film is now streaming on Amazon Prime Videos.