Filmfare Recommends: Top Akshay Kumar Comedies From The Last 20 Years
John Castro 1. Hera Pheri (2000)
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Sunil Shetty, Paresh Rawal, Tabu
The story of this laugh riot is adapted from the 1989 Malayalam film Ramji Rao Speaking which was based on the 1971 television film See The Man Run. A sequel Phir Hera Pheri was released in 2006. The comedy revolved around a wrong number being answered which leads to all kinds of misadventures. Babu Bhaiya (Paresh Rawal), a kind-hearted garage owner has two tenants, Raju (Akshay Kumar), who is indulging in get rich quick schemes all the time and Shyam (Suni Shetty), who has come to the city to get a job in place of his deceased father. One day Kabeera (Gulshan Grover) gives a ransom call to the owner of Star Fisheries, Mr Devi Prasad (Kulbhushan Kharbanda). The call, however, gets connected to Babu Bhaiya. Kabeera, informs that his granddaughter Rinku is kidnapped and asks for a ransom. When Raju gets to know this, he calls Devi Prasad pretending to be Kabira and asks for an even bigger amount.
This leads them to all kinds of mayhem but in the end, they thankfully end up rescuing Rinku and also get rich in the process.
2. Mujhse Shaadi Karogi (2004)
Cast: Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar, Priyanka Chopra
Sameer Malhotra (Salman Khan) has anger management issues. He keeps getting in trouble because of that. He even sours his relations with Colonel Jugraj Singh (Om Puri), the father of Rani Singh (Priyanka Chopra), the woman he loves. Sunny (Akshay Kumar) enters at this stage. He too likes Rani and taking advantage of Sameer’s condition, deliberately sets traps that portray him in a bad light. Sunny wins everyone’s heart with his ‘good’ behaviour while Sameer falls down further in everyone’s esteem. Later, it’s revealed that Sunny is actually Sameer’s childhood friend Arun who did all this to cure his friend of his anger issues. He helps Sameer get reunited with Rani and all ends well.
3. Garam Masala (2005)
Cast: Akshay Kumar, John Abraham, Rimi Sen, Neha Dhupia, Paresh Rawal and Rajpal Yadav
It is a remake of Priyadarshan’s Malayalam film Boeing Boeing (1985). Akshay and John play rival photographers who are always looking to put the other down. Akshay becomes ‘engaged’ to three girls simultaneously in John’s absence. When John returns, he’s at first consumed by jealousy but later tries to help his friend keep the three women apart and becomes romantically entangled with them. All hell breaks loose when Mac’s actual fiance comes visiting. How the two friends defuse the situation forms the crux of the story. This raunchy comedy had John facing off Akshay Kumar in the hot bod department. Their rivalry was the main attraction of the film. Paresh Rawal and Rajpal Yadav too shone in their respective roles.
4. Phir Hera Pheri (2006)
Director: Neeraj Vora
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Sunil Shetty, Paresh Rawal
Neeraj Vora took over the director’s reins from Priyadarshan and Bipasha Basu and Rimi Sen were the new additions to the film. The central plot takes inspiration from the Hollywood film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Raju is conned by Anuradha (Bipasha Basu), to invest his money in a 21-day double your money scheme. He also convinces Babu Bhaiyya (Paresh Rawal) and Shyam (Sunil Shetty) to invest in it. They even sell their lavish bungalow for that. He even asks a small-time goon, Pappu (Rajpal Yadav) to contribute 20 lakhs towards the scheme. They are asked by Pappu’s boss Tiwari (Sharat Saxena), to cough up the money soon otherwise they’ll be killed. They come across a drug consignment and go to a middleman Kachara Seth (Manoj Joshi), who arranges to unknowingly sell it to same mafia guys whom the drugs were meant for. The whole shebang ends in a circus where Raju, Shyam and Babu Bhaiyya escape with three ancient guns worth crores. The film ends just when Raju is poised to throw the guns in a river.
5. Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007)
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Vidya Balan, Shiny Ahuja, Amisha Patel
This thriller-comedy is a remake of the 1993 Malayalam film, Manichitrathazhu. Siddharth (Shiney Ahuja) and Avni (Vidya Balan), the son and daughter-in-law of Badri's (Manoj Joshi) elder brother, return to their native village from the US and decide to stay in their ancestral palace. Badri is against this as the palace is said to be haunted. What Badri fears, happens. Avni gets possessed by the spirit of Manjulika, a Bengali classical dancer. Siddharth calls his friend, psychiatrist Dr Aditya Shrivastav (Akshay Kumar) from New York, to sort things out. Dr Aditya initially feels Siddharth's childhood love interest Radha (Ameesha Patel), who is Badri's adopted daughter, is behind all this but later finds his beliefs shaken when he himself experiences a supernatural encounter. Later, he solves the problem with the help of an elaborate charade.
6. Welcome (2007)
Cast: Feroz Khan, Akshay Kumar, Nana Patekar, Anil Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Paresh Rawal
Dr Ghunghroo (Paresh Rawal) wants his nephew Rajeev(Akshay Kumar) married to a good girl belonging to a decent family. Mafia dons Uday (Nana Patekar) and Majnu (Anil Kapoor) con him into thinking that they’re law-abiding citizens as they too want their sister Sanjana (Katrina Kaif) married to a person who belongs to a good family. Rajeev and Sanjana meet and fall in love. All seems to be going well when Ghungroo comes to know of the subterfuge. He sends his niece Ishika (Mallika Sherawat) as Rajeev’s sweetheart in a bid to break off the marriage but both Uday and Majnu get smitten by Ishika. Rajeev meanwhile inspires Majnu and Uday to give up their life of crime. However, another mafia Don, RDX (Feroz Khan) and his son Lucky (Shereveer), too get embroiled in this madness. The film ends with a hilarious climax, inspired by the Charlie Chaplin film The Gold Rush (1925), where all parties are trapped in a cliff-facing house which starts collapsing.
7. Singh Is Kinng (2008)
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif, Sonu Sood
Happy Singh (Akshay Kumar) is sent along with his friend Rangeela (Om Puri) to bring Lucky (Sonu Sood) back to Punjab. However, his tickets get mixed with those of Puneet (Ranveer Shorey) and he ends up going to Egypt, where he meets Sonia (Katrina Kaif) and falls in love with her. He eventually reaches Australia and finds out that Lucky is the uncrowned king of the Australian underworld. Owing to circumstances perpetuated by Happy, Lucky gets paralysed and somehow Happy gets his throne. Happy sets about reforming Lucky’s gang by making them help a distraught woman (Kirron Kher), who happens to be Sonia’s mother. Slowly, the gang gets reformed and want to give up their life of crime. Lucky’s brother Mika (Jaaved Jaffrey) doesn’t like this development and wants to kill Happy and becomes the boss himself. However, at the last moment, he’s stopped by Lucky, who is cured of his paralysis. Lucky agrees that he has been living the wrong kind of life and promises to reform himself and the film ends on a happy note for all.
8. Desi Boyz (2011)
Cast: Akshay Kumar, John Abraham, Deepika Padukone, and Chitrangada Singh
It marked the directorial debut of Rohit Dhawan. Jignesh 'Jerry' Patel (Akshay Kumar) and Nikhil 'Nick' Mathur (John Abraham), live together in London. Jerry does odd jobs for a living while Nick has a proper corporate job. Both find themselves jobless due to recession. Jerry wants to look after his nephew who has lost his parents and Nick wants to marry his girlfriend and give her a good life. To work towards that aim, both join a male escort service and become extremely popular. However, Nick’s girlfriend leaves him when she finds out he’s an escort. And even Jerry is on the verge of losing the custody of his nephew. The duo, who have fallen off initially, unite to sort out their lives together and succeed in it. Again, the big draw of the film was Akshay and John’s male escort act, which literally set the screen on fire.
9. Jolly LLB 2 (2017)
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Huma Qureshi, Annu Kapoor, Saurabh Shukla
Akshay Kumar plays a small-town lawyer who, ridden by guilt, takes up a case involving false encounters by the police. He has never undertaken a case before, his knowledge of the courtroom proceedings is scratchy and he’s up against one of the best defence lawyers in the city. But his persistence does pay off and he not only ends up uncovering the unlawful activities of the police, but he also ends up nabbing the real culprit. Fake encounters by the police are indeed a sad reality of our country. Hat’s off to director Subhash Kapoor for making a bold, sensitive film on such a hard-hitting subject. While the film is given a comedic treatment, its intentions are anything but. What the film is trying to say is that it’s become the practice of sorts to give the police a clean chit in sensitive cases. The judiciary tends to take a lenient view of things where extra-judicial killings of terrorists are involved. But care should be taken that no innocent gets harmed while taking action against insurgents. That the police shouldn’t overstep their authority nor should it falsify facts. Akshay Kumar does full justice to his role as an inexperienced lawyer who nevertheless isn’t short on courage. Annu Kapoor’s one-liners keep you in splits and Saurabh Shukla too is in fine form as the judge.
10. Good Newwz (2019)
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Diljit Dosanjh, Kiara Advani
Good Newwz is a comedy revolving around pregnancy. Varun Batra (Akshay Kumar) and Deepti Batra (Kareena Kapoor Khan) are an urban upper-middle-class couple from Mumbai trying hard to become pregnant. Honey Batra (Diljit Dosanjh) and Monika Batra (Kiara Advani) are another rich couple from Chandigarh who are also trying to have a baby. They both end up at a high-end IVF clinic run by Dr Joshi (Adil Hussain) and his wife (Tisca Chopra). Due to a similarity in their names, there is a mix up in the clinic and Deepti gets incubated with Honey's sperm and vice versa. The Mumbai Batras can't come to terms with the loud ways of the Chandigarh Batras. Thinking that the yuppie Batras might abort their baby, the rustic couple flies down to Mumbai and buys a house in the same building as Varun and Deepti. Whether the couples end up as friends and would get to reconcile their differences forms the crux of this comedy.
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