Pardesi Babu (1998)

Raju Pardesi lives a poor lifestyle in a village with his cruel step-mother, and decides to re-locate to Mumbai to better his life. Upon arrival he is received by his friend, Happy Singh, ... See full summary »

Director:

Manoj Agrawal

Stars:

Govinda, Raveena Tandon, Shilpa Shetty

Cast

Credited cast:
Govinda	...	Raju Pardesi
Raveena Tandon	...	Karuna
Shilpa Shetty	...	Chinni Chopra
Shashikala	...	Mai (landlady)
Satish Kaushik	...	Harpal 'Happy' Singh
Aashif Sheikh	...	Nandu
Mohnish Bahl	...	Narendra 'Naren'
Arun Bakshi	...	Thief
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Suresh Chatwal	...	Wrestling referee
Avtar Gill	...	Dr. Sharma
Gavin Packard	...	Wrestler
Deepak Qazir	...	Ramji
Veerendra Saxena	...	Scientist
Shama Sikander
Rajeev Verma	...	Mr. Chopra

Storyline

Raju Pardesi lives a poor lifestyle in a village with his cruel step-mother, and decides to re-locate to Mumbai to better his life. Upon arrival he is received by his friend, Happy Singh, who arranges for his accommodation with a stern landlady named Mai. Raju likes to help people, so much so that he wrestles and even loses to a professional wrestler so that he can use the money to help others. One day he returns to his room and finds it occupied by a runaway bride, Chinni Chopra, who refuses to marry Narendra, the man her dad has chosen for her. Eventually Raju and Chinni fall in love with each other, much to the chagrin of Mr. Chopra, who does meet with Raju and asks him to accumulate one Crore rupees in one year and then only can he marry Chinni. Raju accepts the challenge and leaves. Nearing the year's end Chinni receives Raju's letter that he has been able to accumulate the stipulated amount and he is returning to Mumbai for their marriage. But Raju does not arrive and she does ...

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Genres:

Action | Comedy | Drama

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Details

Country:

India

Language:

Hindi

Release Date:

13 November 1998 (India)

Filming Locations:

Ooty, Tamil Nadu, India

Company Credits

Production Co:

K.B. Pictures

Technical Specs

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Soundtracks

"Pada Jeena Tere Bin Meri Jaan"
Written by Anand Raj Anand
Composed by Anand Raj Anand
Performed by Udit Narayan, Seema and Kavita Krishnamurthy
Courtesy of Super Cassettes Industries Limited (T-Series)

User Reviews

A most enjoyable experience with my first Asian film

In my part of the UK, Asian films are often shown at night. I usually avoid them since I'm usually not interested in watching their movies. They seem to have too much singing and simplistic storylines. Last night, however, I was enthralled by my first true Asian movie experience.

The main character in Babu is a fairly poor guy who wants to marry a rich guy's daughter, Chanii. However, the rich father is not impressed and demands that the main character (I forget his name) must earn 100,000,000 rupees within a year, and only then will he let him marry his daughter.

A chance encounter ends up with the overly honest main character accidentally picking up the wrong suitcase on his way home, and suddenly he is blessed with 1,000,000 rupees. His honesty makes him go to the police station to hand it in, but there he is faced by dishonest policemen who only want to take the money for themselves.

Him and his friend, Happy Singh, start to think about how they could make 100 million rupees from just 1 million. They enlist a scientist who has a secret recipe for tea.. and start to sell their own brand of tea.

After the first week, however, they have only sold two packets because their tea is too expensive. Happy Singh suggests that they start their own tea company and leases a house, a large field of tea, and some workers.. on the main character's behalf.

Without giving anything away, the rest of the story revolves around the activities of the main character, Happy Singh, the workers and the house maid known as 'Ms. Break-All'.. because she breaks everything she touches.

A nice film, which makes a great introduction to Asian cinema. Not too much singing, excellent characters, a good story (if a little clichéd).. good stuff.