Kamal Haasan’s Chachi 420, which clocks 28 years on December 19, is rightly considered one of the finest drag acts in the history of male disguises as women on screen. An unmistakable copy of the Hollywood film Mrs Doubtfire, in Chachi 420, I would go as far as to say Kamal Haasan out-excelled Robin Williams from the original. Playing his own daughter’s nanny in order to get access to seeing the child , played by Fatima Sana Sheikh, after divorce, Kamal created a real character and not a caricature of a woman. He modeled the character on one of his own aunts.
Kamal Haasan spoke to this writer about the similarities between the two films.
Said Kamal, “We both played a man in drag. Robin Williams in Mrs Doubtfire and I in Tamil in Avvai Shanmugi (Chachi 420 in Hindi). Our most unfortunate mistake was to keep a few scenes similar to Mrs Doubtfire. We had the idea for our film six years before Mrs Doubtfire. I guess we were both inspired from the same source. My idea was to do a film where Kramer Versus Kramer met Tootsie.”
Interestingly, Kamal was offered an opportunity to play a woman before Chachi 420. “A year before we decided to do Avvai Shanmugi my friend Gigo of Chota Chetan had a subject about a man disguised as a woman. I refused that film because I had to play a younger woman.I wasn’t keen to bring in a sensuality to the fun element. I wanted my female character to be older so that we eliminated the erotica element from the gender equation. To be honest I like myself as a woman Chachi 420.”
