Producer & Director: Shakeel Noorani
*ing: Sunil Shetty, Priya Gill, Paresh Rawal, Archana Puran Singh, Sachin Khedekar, Satish Kaushik and Special Appearance by Ranjeet
Music: Aadesh Shrivastava

Released on : January 22, 1999

Reviewed by: Aniket Joshi
aniket@indolink.com

out of 
Bade Dilwala is inspired (a fancy term for copying in Bollywod these days) from the 1994 Hollywood film “It Could Happen To You.” Shakeel Noorani tries to convert the original Hollywood concept into a Bollywood lovey-dovey story, but his attempts fail.

Ram (Sunil Shetty) is an honest cop who lives with his wife Manthara (Archana Puran Singh) who is a hair diresser, and his daughter Anthara. Manthara is always dreaming of becoming rich and even objects when Ram doesn’t accept bribes. She also doesn’t pay much attention to her daughter. Ram does, he tries to give Anthara the love of a mother and a father.

One day Ram is paying his bill at a restaurant and he doesn’t have the money to pay the tip to the waitress, Piya (Priya Gill). But Ram had just purchased a lottery ticket worth Rs 5 crore, so he promises Piya that if he wins the lottery, he’ll give her Rs 2.5 crore, and if he doesn’t, he’ll come back the next day and pay the tip. Surprisingly, Ram wins the lottery and as per his promise he gives Piya half of the share. Naturally being the greedy woman Manthara is, she doesn’t like what her husband did.

Mannubhai (Paresh Rawal) is one of Manthara’s clients and tells her that they should produce a film so she can make more money. Mannubhai’s true intentions however, are to slowly get all of Manthara’s money which she had won in the lottery. Meanwhile, Ram and Piya start getting close to each other. Their “affair” is publicized by the press, so Manthara takes this opportunity to get all of the money from the lottery and decides to give Ram a divorce.

Sunil Shetty has given a good performance, but he just doesn’t seem to suit in this type of role. Priya Gill looks beautiful, but she needs to work on her emoting skills. Archana Puran Singh gets annoying after awhile. Paresh Rawal is hilarious, he and Aadesh Shrivastava’s music are the only saving grace of the film.

Shakeel Noorani should’ve worked more on the screenplay rather then shooting songs on European mountains that we’ve seen a million times in Hindi films. He shouldn’t have put a couple of meaningless action scenes which aren’t required.

All in all, Bade Dilwala is nothing more than a timepass film, it has a few good moments thanks to Paresh Rawal, but don’t expect anything more.