Producer: Bunty Walia & Sohail Khan
Director : Sohail Khan
*ing: Salman Khan, Arbaaz Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Shakti Kapoor, Johnny Lever, Neeraj Vohra, and Razzak Khan
Music: Himesh Reshammiya & Sajid-Wajid

Released on : September 10, 1999

Reviewed by: Aniket Joshi
aniket@indolink.com

out of 

Idiotic. That’s just one of the words one may use to describe this film. Hello Brother is supposed be a comedy film. In a comedy normally, one laughs with the situations and the actors’ performance. In Hello Brother however, one will laught at the ridiculous situations and the performances, namely Salman’s.

Hero (Salman Khan) works for a courier company owned by Khanna (Shakti Kapoor). Hero lives in a basti and loves Rani (Rani Mukherjee), Rani just thinks of Hero as a good friend. Enter Inspector Vishal (Arbaaz Khan), who works in the narcotics department. Vishal suspects Khanna to be involved in a drug ring and confronts him. Hero stands up to Vishal and defends his boss. However, soon Hero learns the truth behind Khanna. In a confrontation, Khanna kills Hero and shoots Vishal in the heart. The police department decides to transplant Hero’s heart into Vishal’s body.

Now Hero appears as a ghost and can only be seen by Vishal, since his heart is in Vishal’s body. Hero says that his aatma will only rest in peace after Khanna is killed. On the other hand Rani and Vishal both begin to fall in love.

The story sounds like a good idea for a fantasy film. But in order for one to enjoy this type of film, it has to have good direction, which Hello Brother lacks. Hearing a guy fart or see Salman pinch a guy’s nipples maybe funny the first couple of times, but it just gets cheesy later on. Another thing that’s stupid about the film is the piece of background music that’s played whenever Salman appears as a ghost. The blame for the film turning out as it is can only be put on Sohail Khan. All he uses to create laughs is repetitive corny jokes.

Salman is just there to scream and act like an idiot, which he clearly seems to be, the way he laughs and dresses. Rani looks beautiful, and that’s the only thing she’s used for. Arbaaz is okay, he is able to make you laugh in a couple of scenes.

In order for Sohail Khan to be a (good) director, he needs to work on his characterizations. Putting Salman in a film and making him act like himself may work once (like it did in PKTDK) but won’t work over and over. Tell your actors what they should do Mr. Khan, don’t just put them in front of the camera, give them their lines, and say “action!”