In Coolie No. 1, the heaviest load carried by Varun Dhawan is the burden of legacy. Dhawan’s latest project has been directed by his fath...
In Coolie No. 1, the heaviest load carried by Varun Dhawan is the burden of legacy.
Dhawan’s latest project has been directed by his father, the 1990s hitmaker David Dhawan, and is a remake of the 1995 comedy of the same name. That film itself was a remake of the 1993 Tamil production Chinna Mapillai, which in turn borrowed a major plot device from the 1970s classic Gol Maal.
The first Coolie No. 1 was written by Kader Khan, now deceased, and steered by the still-extant and evergreen Govinda. David Dhawan seems to believe that what Govinda did – and only Govinda could do – can be replicated by his son. This fatherly indulgence works very poorly for Varun Dhawan, who never quite comes into his own in a production aimed at resurrecting the ghosts of the past and recycling 1990s chartbusters and jokes.
It’s not enough that Varun Dhawan must mimic Govinda, which he does for nearly half of the 134-minute movie. Dhawan spends much of the other half imitating Mithun Chakraborty. He also impersonates Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Nana Patekar. Even the venerable Dilip Kumar isn’t spared. In the closing moments, Dhawan tries to pass himself off as a female nurse.
