Comedies from yesteryear have their own distinct and nostalgic charm. While they are often more reliant on slapstick comedy than anything else, the settings and the outfits are enough to transport you into a bygone era. The scripts are also usually tight, clever and self-contained, which are attributes that are often present from modern-day comedies. They might not be the most politically-correct by 2020 standards, but if you are capable of viewing them as products of their time, then here are some comedy movies you can kick back and watch right now for a few hours of fun.
Gol Maal
The trailblazer for a comedy of errors in Indian cinema, this movie is basically a pioneer for all the tropes that occur and re-occur in every modern Bollywood comedy, but they have rarely been executed as well as here. Amol Palekar plays a fun-loving college graduate who has to pretend to be a good sanskari Indian man to get a job. When he is spotted outside work, he invents a twin brother to get out of hot water with his boss (whose daughter he’s courting at the moment). This one will have you in splits.
Streaming on Prime Video
Andaaz Apna Apna
Salman Khan and Aamir Khan play two scrappy young men looking for a way to get rich quick in this hilarious feature. Even the dumbest jokes make you laugh, just by virtue of their presentation and the magnitude of the skill of the actors. The two boys attempt to marry a rich heiress, as gangsters chase her father for money. All these stories often intersect and make for a delightful khichdi of fun and hijinks.
Streaming on Netflix
Khatta Meetha
This film was one of, if not the first films to explore the dynamic within a blended family, and has been adapted in different ways throughout the years. A widower with four sons decides to get married to a woman who is raising three kids on her own. While the couple finally finds some peace and love in each other’s company, their kids are engaged in a civil war. The various ‘battles’ of this war make for highly entertaining watching, and help to make the emotional climax of this movie feel earned.
