Junglee (1961) :
Brief Review -
A delightful super-hit rom-com with a typical family drama and two chartbuster numbers. After making 3 movies with Dev Anand, Subodh Mukherjee finally turned his horses towards emerging star Shammi Kapoor and newbie Saira Banu. Junglee has garnered huge popularity for its music and the way Shammi Kapoor has excelled as a wild romantic hero. It indeed deserves that hype, but I think there are several other factors that deserve some praise as well. First of all, Saira Banu. We have seen heroes teasing heroines, flirting with them, calling them by names, being naughty, chasing them, etc. Here, you see the heroine doing all that stuff, and it's damn adorable. Saira Banu has probably played the romantic heroine of the time, and my heart is jumping right now even while describing what she has done in the film. That entire Kashmir chapter is ruled by her, her beauty, and her screen presence. As we come to the end of that chapter, Shammi takes over with his iconic "Yaahooo" scream. Before that changeover, we see him playing a stern manager and the very disciplined son of an overly disciplined mother. He gets a changeover by the intermission point, but his mother takes it until the climax. The film is about a pompous, rich heir who can't speak with kindness to anyone. All he sees is business, money, and discipline. During his trip to Kashmir, he falls in love with a local girl, whose father is a doctor. After coming back home, he learns about his fixed marriage and then makes all attempts to abandon it. Simultaneously, we have the love story of his sister, who is in love with the clerk and is pregnant too. Will the mother accept them? There's a typical masala and family drama at the end, and we get a perfect Hindi cinema's mainstream entertainer with a lot of funny moments. Mukherjee's direction is much better in the first half compared to what we have in the second half. Junglee still has enough material to keep you entertained.
RATING - 6.5/10*
By - #samthebestest.
