At a macro level, there’s literally nothing you can sense at a one-line level and say, “Wow, this is going to be huge.” But the beautiful “micro” touches make the movie.
You don’t associate the word “benign” with Ram Gopal Varma. You associate it with someone like Sooraj Barjatya, whose Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! had the sweetest-natured people — and the sweetest-natured pup. (Its name was Tuffy, but it could have been Toffee). But a year later, we got Rangeela, and it was just niceness all around. The heroine (Urmila Matondkar, as Mili) is benign. The hero (Aamir Khan, as Munna) is blustery, but benign. The third wheel (Jackie Shroff as Kamal) is benign. The only time he flares up is when some uncouth men (the only un-benign people in this film) harass his leading lady during a shoot, but the scene lasts all of 12.283 seconds. Kamal may be known for his furious fisticuffs on screen (one of his hits is titled Mr. Bond, and believe me, it is not about an insurance agent), but in Rangeela, where he’s mostly seen off-screen, he seems the sort of chap who spends his spare time listening to Mehdi Hasan ghazals with a Kalamkari shawl thrown around his shoulders.
Read the rest of this article here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/features/bollywood-features/bollywood-rangeela-at-25-ram-gopal-varma-a-still-colourful-fantasy-ar-rahman-aamir-khan-urmila-matondkar-jackie-shroff-baradwaj-rangan/
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Baradwaj Rangan 
Doba
September 8, 2020
Ooooh, thank you for writing this 😀 I usually earmark your articles for the weekend but when I saw Rangeela in the title, I had to read and comment bang in the middle of a work day. My all time favourite movie. It is so feather light that it blows away the blues. What a character, Munna was. He transformed me into an Aamir fan (among the sea of Shahrukh fans in my class). And Millie was utterly awesome! She was so unapologetic about her ambitions and yet not a heartless career driven vamp or serious and unhappy (waiting to be fixed with some life lessons from the hero).
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Kaveri
September 8, 2020
BR, RGV says the film was made to showcase Urmila in all her 20/21 year old glory. I would have like to know what you thought of her performance, her beauty, her dancing.
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Santa
September 8, 2020
Thanks for the trip down a wonderful memory lane! It was the first movie that I saw twice on the big screen.
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Sushila Ravindranath
September 8, 2020
Only you can spin out a yarn like this as our favorite newspaper would say
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Madan
September 8, 2020
What I remember about Rangeela is how little I remember about it now, even though I did like the film very much and of course the soundtrack was a bumper hit too. Reading this put it into perspective: it’s not about what this film is about but how it approaches a very cliche subject. Like some other RGV works of the time, it managed to combine stylishness with realistic-ness/grit in a way that was very unusual at the time.
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TambiDude
September 8, 2020
I disagree about the soundtrack. It has not aged well. Just for comparison Sapney song “oh la la la, ek bagiya mein” is a gem. Sounds fantastic even today.
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TambiDude
September 8, 2020
I never saw this movie after 1996. I liked it at that time. I doubt whether the movie is watchable today.
Anyhow RGV’s best were Satya and Company – by a mile.
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Enigma
September 8, 2020
Rangeela was the most hyped Bollywood film of 1995 and, to me atleast, was a huge disappointment. The whole movie felt like a collection of disjointed scenes loosely strung together. The biggest disappointment was the music videos which were so badly shot, especially when compared with some of Mani Ratnam’s works, which was the gold standard of those times. What a waste of Rahman’s soundtrack.
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Aran
September 8, 2020
What a tribute! Made me want to find and watch the movie now. 🙂
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An Jo
September 8, 2020
Hardly has any-body been able to capture the spirit of the Bombay film industry likeSai Paranjapein the ‘80s and then, Ramu in the ‘90s. Ramu’s ‘Rangeela’ especially stood out to me; since in December 2019, I visited Columbia studios in LA for 3 hours spending 200$, and got to know where the hotel-lobby scenes of ‘PRETTY WOMAN’ were shot; and more so, TITANIC, where, a gradient parking lot was used to shoot the entire drowning scenes in the Atlantic Ocean. My initial reactions were, “Are you effing kidding me?’? This is where Jack drowned?? What the hell!” The lady-guide who took me to that 3 hour-tour was obviously noticing my increasing problems.
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Aman Basha
September 8, 2020
I remember reading in RGV’s autobiography over how it was a certain friend’s failed love story that was the inspiration behind the hotel scene in Rangeela and also how watching Sound Of Music with his mother made him realize that sensuality and female presence presented in a natural, proud way prevents it from turning sleazy and vulgar. It’s a well shot and made film, the colours, cinematography still stand today and so does Rehman’s music and their visualization. It’s a light, fluffy ode to Bombay Cinema and an celebration of Urmilla whose costumes and presentation still surprised me. The male leads were pretty good, a favorite being the restaurant scene. Aamir danced well too (found Malang a bit stiff). ‘Hai Rama’ is far far more erotic than the slo mo cleavage focused seduction songs we get these days.
Good Lord, you had to write something like this to make me mourn days when Hindi film music was good, masala style still had specialists and RGV meant something.
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Sri Prabhuram
September 8, 2020
What did you think of the RGV’s Daud (both the movie and Rahman’s soundtrack)?
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gnanaozhi
September 8, 2020
Rangan you knocked it out of the park, I am now trying to see which OTT it is streaming on.
I first watched it in Sathyam and my friends and I somehow loved the movie despite being at the “ek gaon mein ek kisan ragutata” level of Hindi comprehension. Urmila was for 15 year olds without the internet, Midnight Masala (Sun tv program) personified so that was a bonus as well. Towards the end of it’s run, on a Saturday, we went to Devi and Watched the 1pm show, then a friend of mine, decided he will treat us to the 4pm show so we watched it… And then standing outside near the cycle park, one clown was like we should watch it again, and another clown went and got us the Rs 6 tickets (we only had 5 bucks left and the cycle parking alone was like Rs 4)…so we watched it for a third time in a row.
Such nostalgia!
Rangan, what in your opinion was the cause for the RGV of Rangeela, Satya, Shool, Company, Sarkar to make trash like Aag (and everything since)? Like the RGV of Satya or Rangeela is a master of his craft while the last 15 movies he has made is beyond reprehensible in taste.
Very few instances of a director having such different outputs.
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ravenus1
September 8, 2020
“he seems the sort of chap who spends his spare time listening to Mehdi Hasan ghazals with a Kalamkari shawl thrown around his shoulders.”
But but but he plays video games, while Ramu kaka comes in with the BO figures of his latest release, and goes ballistic at the idea of shooting in Goa, like it was freaking Barcelona (He couldn’t have been that a big star, no?)
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abishekspeare
September 9, 2020
I think Rangeela is to RGV what CCOBB was to David Fincher. What an album, though. You made a great point in saying he wasn’t playing safe. Even today when I listen to Mangta hai Kya that pixie wails make me think wtf is going on here.
As an aside, I wonder how RGV today is making 4-5 movies at a time. His last hit was so long ago. How does he land a producer? His films have been receiving largely negative reviews and have been bombing big time. Yet he gets Eros Now and Amitabh Bachchan for Sarkar 3. After that movie flopped he still got Nagarjuna for Officer.
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Rocky
September 10, 2020
Naughty Naughty BR !!! LOL
At the end, he seems happy that Mili and Munna are together. There’s none of that Kamal Haasan smiling-through-tears angst from Saagar. I suppose he can always close his eyes and dream up erotic reveries about Mili. Hai Rama, he’ll have his hands full.
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Saket
September 10, 2020
Excellent, excellent piece, BR. Steven Kapoor was a straight dig at Vidhu Vinod Chopra — he couldn’t help it, I guess. And,It probably wasn’t unwarranted either — VVC was known to be an insufferable jerk even during those days. Don’t know if you left this bit out by design though (wink, wink)
Rangeela is also the film (and role) that served as a catalyst for Aamir — he completely boycotted all the award functions after he was denied a well-deserved trophy. I remember, I was gutted when Filmfare decided to award a buffoonish Raj Malhotra from that utterly dreadful DDLJ. God, I hate that film.
I’m probably not too keen on the music right now but I still think Maangta Hai Kya was picturised quite well. In those days, it was like a peek into the future.
In many ways, Munna was a riff on Amitabh Bachchan’s Anthony from Manmohan Desai’s Amar Akbar Anthony, and while it can never claim to be as iconic as the latter, it still made people sit up and take notice. I do recall becoming an Aamir Khan fan post-Rangeela.
I still think Shiva is RGV’s best film. Yes, even better than Satya but Rangeela was quite enjoyable too. Fluff, sure, but enjoyable fluff, nonetheless.
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brangan
September 10, 2020
Rocky: Haha. Even in a serious piece, you shouldn’t take yourself TOO seriously. Once in a while, one MUST sneak in a masturbation joke 🙂
Saket: Yeah, that VVC bit RGV just confirmed in his interview with Anupama. (Earlier, it was a toss-up between VVC and Shekhar Kapur 🙂 )
I’m probably not too keen on the music right now…
Oh, it’s the same for me, too. It’s not an early-Rahman album I keep returning too, but whenever I come across a song, it makes me amazed at just how different it sounded back then, the Nadeem-Shravan and Jatin-Lalit era.
I love a lot of these composer’s songs, too — but “innovative” isn’t exactly a word that you’d use for them. Even today, when you listen to ‘Maangta hai kya’ or ‘Oru koodai sunglight’, you’re gobsmacked that something like this exists in a film music album. 🙂
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Madan
September 10, 2020
I would have taken Steven Kapoor to mean Shekhar Kapoor based on when the movie came out. The same last name, plus the image about Shekhar also was of a misfit.
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Ghost Who Walks
September 10, 2020
As an aside, I wonder how RGV today is making 4-5 movies at a time. His last hit was so long ago. How does he land a producer? His films have been receiving largely negative reviews and have been bombing big time. Yet he gets Eros Now and Amitabh Bachchan for Sarkar 3. After that movie flopped he still got Nagarjuna for Officer.
These days, he is not getting the likes of EROS to produce his movies. What he does get is a lot of small players to put in some money towards his movies which I believe are made with an extremely limited budget. I think there are multiple reasons why
He still has a lot of residual goodwill that he earned in his hey days, especially in the twin telugu states. RGV was the one who broke the barriers in more ways than one in telugu cinema and a lot of people still do admire him for that.
He is completely into a shock-value mode these days and as we have all painfully learnt in the recent past, shock value sells. Or gets views.
Ofcourse, his siding up with YSRCongress Party is unmistakable. That must help too in getting some money funneled to him.
Nagarjuna in Officer I think is an outlier. Probably due to the nostalgia factor again? Forget A list, He doesn’t even get B list actors anymore in his films
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M.R. Sharan (@sharanidli)
September 10, 2020
Rangeela is not an album I return to often (in fact, I am revisited them for the first time in YEARS after all these pieces came out!), but it says a LOT about how ahead of its times the entire album was if “Pyaar yeh jaane kaisa hai” is the closest one finds to a “conventional number” of its times. Everything but maybe the main melody from that track is nothing like anything that came before.
Just listen to one small bit, the first interlude: the insanely dramatic violins (so different from the screechy parts common in those times), the rapidly cascading and bubbling piano notes, the thumping drums … Even the one Indian instrument that plays — the sitar — sounds so blissful and clear! This sitar bit and the song in general was also characteristic of one more facet of early Rahman that made him stand out. He often greatly desisted the urge to “fill” up his songs with clear parts. What he did was to just give a song some space to just exist — a soft synth or a basic set of beats, a sitar melodiously strumming, just building drama for what would follow.
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vijay
October 3, 2020
Rangeela was sort of a role-reversed Hindi Pretty Woman and a musical at that. I am surprised nobody in Bollywood have done that yet to American President(Michael Douglas feel good movie). If done well, these are surefire mainstream hit material
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Kaushik Bhattacharya
November 18, 2020
Catching up with BR’s blog after a long time and this brought back some amazing memories, thanks for the post. And indeed, without Aamir/Munna, the film probably would not have turned out as special as it did. My three favourite Aamir performances are all from that era, Rangeela, Ghulam, and Fire. After that with the success of Lagaan and DCH, he’s unfortunately turned into an affected/borderline pompous performer in almost all his films, possibly with the exception of Talaash.
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