7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Three brothers, three religions, three lots of fun, August 21, 2006
A wonderfully cheesy Hindi film from the late 1970s when flares were in vogue and disco ruled the world. Even now some 30 years on, this film still holds its own and is as charming now as it was then but with the added bonus of subtitles to help those people along whose Hindi is somewhat scratchy or in my case totally none existent.
This is a typical Hindi film with a zillion songs, lots of fancy dance routines along with the usual flimsy plot following the fate of three young brothers who find themselves being raised as a Hindu, Muslim and Christian respectively when they are separated from each other after their father goes on the run from the police and their mother disappears.
"Amar, Akbar, Anthony" is a film with no genre whatsoever; it is a drama, comedy, adventure, musical and love story all rolled into one, with the actors and actresses singing and dancing their way through a series of impossible events that culminate in everyone getting their girl, and the mother and father being reunited after 20 years apart.
This is escapism in its literal sense but it is great fun to watch and you will soon find yourself booing the baddies and cheering on the goodies. Oh yes this film has goodies and baddies, kidnapped girls (who happen to be very beautiful) and heroic rescues from burning buildings, the odd miracle or two, along with a forced marriage, one funeral, an act of vengeance and a delightful scene of riding off into the sunset that will have you laughing and cheering from beginning to end.
With an excellent cast of characters playing the lead roles, all you can do is sit back, pop open a bag of pakoras and munch your way through Hindi movie heaven.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliantly absurd film marred by awful subtitles, November 14, 2007
This story of a family separated by chance and reunited by fate is widely and rightly considered a Bollywood classic. The film (three hours long -- short by Bollywood standards) is a wonderful exercise in absurdity, an amalgam of countless genres which manages to make some obvious but worthy observations about family and religion in its spare time. It's a Unitarian-Kung Fu-romcom-gangster-musical-revenge flick, directed by Manmohan Desai with visual flair and a winking understanding of the tropes he exploits. The acting is superb and ridiculous, and the titular brothers are given ample opportunity to shine. Amitabh Bachchan's Anthony (a charismatic and empathic Kung Fu Catholic) and Pran's grave Kishanlal are especially memorable. The villains are over the top, the song and dance numbers extravagant, the fight sequences utterly ludicrous. Can't recommend it enough. The movie's primary flaws lie in its length and the relative weakness of its female characters.
Unfortunately, the DVD release of the film is deeply problematic. The subtitles are truly dismal, failing to translate ALL of the songs and huge chunks of dialogue. English misspellings abound. The translation smacks of laziness, and one can only hope for a more definitive release at some point. Four or five star film, but it's difficult to recommend the DVD.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Missing scenes- big disappointment, June 26, 2011
I love this film and had seen it hundreds of times since it first came out. I was very excited about having my own copy. Everything was fine up until the point where Anthony meets Jenny then I noticed that an important scene didn't appear (how is Jenny able to get away from her bodyguard?). Then another one. Then another one... (for example, Salma's father secret meeting photographed by Akbar, Akbar in the hospital after being beaten by Salma's father's thugs, etc.). In other words, this is a very poorly made copy. If one had never seen this film parts of the story wouldn't make sense at all. Not worth what I paid.
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