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The Great Big Bollywood shaadis
Shaadi songs are a staple of our cinema, and the overall glitz and tamasha of our big weddings fits right into Bollywood masala.
Therefore we have several films just about shaadis. Here's a look at 10 very different shaadi movies:
Toh Baat Paki
Kedar Shinde's upcoming film about the search for a good suitor sees Tabu in the role of an elder sister sussing out prospects for the bride to be.
The acclaimed actress plays a manipulative woman who has no trouble breaking her sister's heart as long as it gets her closer to the man more suited to her.
Monsoon Wedding
One of our only crossover successes, Mira Nair's film about a Delhi wedding had the West quite smitten with what they thought was the true story behind the average Indian wedding -- despite it being a dark, incestuous tale.
The rest of us discovered a fine actor in Vijay Raaz, who stood around chomping marigolds.
Hum Aapke Hai Koun...!
It might seem dated today, but Sooraj Barjatya's Hum Aapke Hain Koun...! changed Bollywood's landscape -- and indeed, influenced our weddings, to this day -- when it released over 15 years ago.
The film was loaded with songs, had no villain, and was all about family. Audiences lapped it up, making it a historic success.
Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge
The finest mainstream film of the 1990s, Aditya Chopra's DDLJ saw a Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol romance nipped in the bud by the girl forced to conform to an arranged marriage.
The film progressively showed both his and her parents as reasonable, not monsters, and Khan's character did the atypical thing by refusing to elope.
Hum Saath Saath Hai
Keen to repeat the resounding success of his Hum Aapke Hain Koun...!, Sooraj Barjatya recast his favoured Salman Khan as Prem and surrounded him by a massive multiple starcast.
But this over-excessive version didn't fare as well, thanks mostly because of way too many characters.
Main Prem Ki Deewani Hoon
A remake of the 1976 film Chitchor, this Barjatya film is about Kareena Kapoor being set up in an arranged marriage with a character named Prem.
Both Hrithik Roshan and Abhishek Bachchan play Prem in this disastrous film whose title literally translates to 'I'm crazy about Prem.'
Vivah
Barjatya cut out the excess in terms of cast and sets -- he took young actors Shahid Kapoor and Amrita Rao, and set the film in the heartland, away from urbania -- but things hadn't changed much in his universe.
The film is a regressive failure, but made bucketfuls of money at the box office.
Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai
This Sanjay Gadhvi film was a remake of Julia Roberts' starrer My Best Friends Wedding, and Uday Chopra stars in the lead.
That sentence pretty much sums up the basic problems with this film, and the audience wasn't impressed with either the film or the leading man.
Socha Na Tha
While not exactly a marriage film, Imtiaz Ali's charming directorial debut starts off with boy and girl meeting under an arranged marriage roof -- and as they say now and the families begin a feud, the youngsters decide that they are actually right for each other.
Saathiya
One of the better films about the fleeting romance of shaadi, Shaad Ali's film has young lovers marrying against all odds -- and finding out that just marrying each other really isn't enough.
Vivek Oberoi and Rani Mukerji star as the couple who gradually drift apart after they start living as man and wife.