Film Analysis of Coolie No. 1

By Jashvitha Dhagey

Coolie No. 1, directed by David Dhawan starring Sara Ali Khan and Varun Dhawan in the lead roles revolves around a coolie who dupes a rich girl into falling in love with and marrying him by posing as a millionaire. Drama ensues when he has to keep up his lies so as to not get caught by the girl and her family. The leads are supported by Paresh Rawal, Jawed Jaffrey, Sahil Vaid, Shikha Talsania, Rajpal Yadav

This film has more cliches and stereotypes than story arcs. Women are reduced to objects of desire, people with disabilities are made fun of and people who don’t come from economically sound backgrounds are cancelled.

Varun Dhawan’s complexion is a shade darker than his skin colour in real life when he is a coolie. He is however fair when he is in the role of the Prince. This is a way to show that people from economically weak backgrounds have darker complexions. This promotes the idea that people with darker complexions cannot be prosperous.

Varun Dhawan tries to emulate the Maharashtrian accent solely because he grew up on the station and fails miserably. It’s cultural appropriation because not everybody who lives on the streets of Bombay speaks like that. It is honestly boring that his entire personality revolves around being a truthful savior at the station. In another instance of cultural appropriation, we see that Javed Jaffrey picks up a terrible “South Indian accent” when he turns into the secretary. Not all “South Indians” speak that way.

It’s hypocritical of Varun Dhawan to pause his life that he so passionately claims to be proud of to lie to a girl in order to woo her. It sets unreal standards for young men who might grow up with the impression that it’s okay to leave your entire life behind to woo a girl by lying to her.

Paresh Rawal is rich and he insults a prospective groom because they travelled by bus and then declares that his future son-in-law should be so rich that he goes to buy vegetables on a chartered plane. If that isn’t classist and elitist, I don’t know what is. To make this already shoddy scene worse, he infantilizes his own mother by shutting her down when she tries to talk sense into him. He asks her to go worship God by lighting candles because that’s the only thing she’s good for.

Varun Dhawan “falls in love” with Sara Ali Khan after viewing her photograph. This is followed by a sing in which Sara is clad in short clothes which purposefully accentuate certain parts of her body. She proceeds to gyrate in the most outlandish ways to the most obnoxious song. Why is she portrayed as so dumb that she can’t identify that she’s being duped by her own husband? We know nothing of her except that she’s a rich man’s daughter. Even after she gets married, she automatically turns into a housewife who cooks and cleans for her husband and suddenly also goes to the temple because her husband is Hindu?

Varun Dhawan --> Javed Jaffrey <--> Paresh Rawal --> Sara Ali Khan

The hero comes in contact with a matchmaker who wants to take revenge on a rich man by marrying his daughter to a poor man. That’s how the movie’s female lead comes into the picture- without an identity of her own.

In the course of the movie, we see how she becomes only the object because of which we see how smart, strong and brave the hero is. When looked at from the lens of how Bollywood generally portrays men and women, it seems pretty normal. The important thing to remember is that as much as people tell each other that it’s only a film, they can’t help but want the same things got them in real life.

Sara’s mama played by Rajpal Yadav is portrayed in such a poor light only because he has a lisp. It’s ableist and promotes the idea that having a lisp can you hold you back from being your best self. It influences the way in which people perceive and treat people with disabilities- like it’s not normal and something to be looked down upon.

Varun Dhawan and Sahil Vaid dress up as transgender nurses. Paresh Rawal and Johny Lever are seen flirting with them and lusting over them. This reinforces the idea that transgender people are like forbidden fruit that can be yearned for and ogled at but cannot be treated normally. The way in which the characters of the nurses are portrayed is honestly so unoriginal and old.

It is sickening to watch Paresh Rawal trying to get his other daughter to sleep with a man he has no actual about just because he has money. What makes it worse is the way he acts as a voyeur when he supposedly sends off both his daughters to a hotel to holiday with the rich men.

The bell boy at the hotel is fat-shamed TWICE by both of Varun Dhawan’s characters. It’s perceived as nothing by the heroine who is just waltzing into the hotel like his arm candy.

Shikha Talsania and Sahil Vaid do not have perfectly sculpted bodies like Varun Dhawan and Sara Ali Khan. They are also their sidekicks. Can people who don’t have perfectly chiselled bodies not be the main characters of their lives?

The entire film can be summed up in the lines of Clement Greenberg from the book Mass Culture when he says that kitsch “pre-digests art for the spectators and spares him effort, provides him with a shortcut to the pleasure of art that detours what is necessarily difficult in genuine art.” This movie infantilizes adults by giving the film to the viewers on a platter. They don’t even have to use their brains to figure out things that are so obvious! While it’s a no brainer for adults, it is also one of those films that gets okayed for viewing by children. When children are overstimulated, that is, exposed to sexual innuendo and cringey stereotypes, they grow up too soon thinking that the ways of the world shown in this type of cinema are indeed the ways of the world. Thus, reinforcing everything that we need to change. The movie sells the idea that guys with chiselled bodies are heroes and in order to be liked by them, women have to be hyperfeminine, fair and dimwitted. This makes young women who are intelligent and smart dumb themselves down in order to find love. The film has entirely dumbed down not just the story but life itself for its audiences. I cannot imagine the number of children who will grow up thinking that it’s okay to make decisions for women, use them to fulfill your personal vendetta and lie to them in the name of love. There is not one single scene in the movie that happens in real life. There is not one scene in the film that doesn’t exclusively cater to the cis-gendered heterosexual man who thinks he’s the boss of the patriarchal society we live in. This movie validates his toxic behaviour and gives him the spotlight on a stage that is already occupied by the rest of his ilk. The movie came out in 2020. They could have at least tried to be more sensitive.