Hindi film heroes have been doing occasional comedies in the Golden Era too including stalwarts as Bhagwan, Raj Kapoor, Kishore Kumar, Shammi Kapoor and even Dharmendra, Dilip Kumar and Sunil Dutt at times. However the lead actors prominently taking over the added responsibility of doing comic acts in their films largely began with Amitabh Bachchan in the late 70s, when a few specially designed funny sequences became the expected key feature of his films directed by Manmohan Desai in particular.
The trend continued in the later years with Amol Palekar and Anil Kapoor (having a bindaas dialogue delivery) and then we found almost everyone doing the same in the 90s with Govinda excelling them all and Salman, Aamir, Akshay and more notably incorporating the trick in their key projects. No doubt Akshay worked on this specific genre more aggressively, but in my humble opinion it’s Salman who always looked at ease and so natural or comfortable doing his comic acts in films such as ANDAZ APNA APNA, JUDWAA, HELLO BROTHER, MAINE PYAR KYUN KIYA, NO ENTRY, GOD TUSSI GREAT HO and more.
Interestingly Salman himself gave a logical explanation for this in his 1998 interview given to Filmfare magazine, wherein he surprisingly disclosed that he actually did a take-off on the famous villain-turned-comedian Shakti Kapoor in the comic sequences of his hit film PYAR KIYA TO DARNA KYA (1998).
Further explaining the same he added, “When Shakti goes for those eye-rolling, hysterical antics, it seems a comedian doing his usual number. But when a hero does it, the audience is pleasantly surprised. Normally the hero is so straight that even a slight change towards the unusual goes down well with the audience.”
A point to be noted indeed, which was certainly well-cracked by Desai in his films with Amitabh Bachchan beginning with AMAR AKBAR ANTHONY, brilliantly followed by Salman Khan in his noteworthy comic acts.
Moreover, I firmly believe that the detailed discussions on films at home with his father SALIM KHAN must have helped Salman to carefully consider and select his valuable inspirations in terms of comedy resulting in such effortless acts and a huge fan following.
Cheers!
(Note: The article was first published on UC-News Mobile App in April 2018)
