Anees Bazmi’s No Entry managed to do the near-impossible. It was a sex comedy without overt sex and vulgarity. The upmarket, high-profile star cast ensures a high-quality, cleaned-out satirical scenario freed of annoying innuendos. Nonetheless, the swiftly flowing slapstick replete with grossly overblown dollops of mistaken identity and other intensely corny contrivances takes the comedy this farce and no more.
Farcical comedies about infidelity are not alien to Hindi cinema. B.R. Chopra’s Pati Patni Aur Woh gave the late and great Sanjeev Kumar a chance to do the incorrigible flirtatious husband with a deadpan ingenuity that his successors have found hard to replicate. The men are constantly chasing the women, while their spouses are constantly chasing their skirt-chasing husbands. The confusions of infidelity (including Boman Irani, doing another delightful little turn as an unctuous politician with a battleship for a wife) are gross examples of political incorrectness.
Recalling the No Entry experience, Anees says, “No Entry got a lot of love. Everybody started saying that because of No Entry, I got an entry. It was a very, very special film, not only for me, but for everyone, and it was made with such passion. The entire cast stood by me to help. Salman was supposed to be a guest, but he shot for 12-15 days. I feel it was a great script, the way I sat and wrote it and when we even saw the trial of the film, everyone, all the actors were there and we were together at Boney ji’s bungalow. Srideviji was also there.”
Anees remembers the reactions at the film’s first screening. “Everyone was like, yaar Aneesbhai, you have made a beautiful comedy. It was a new concept for a comedy, it only depended on dialogues. There was no double meaning at all. I would never get dirty to draw in the audience.No Entry had a different style of comedy. So it was great. When the film released, we released it under a lot of difficulties. Initially, nobody knew it was released. But day by day, the film grew. The film had its own strengths, and it grew by the day.
Anees says he had no difficulty directing such a vast cast. “It was not difficult to manage them. Anilji knows me since the last….I don’t remember how many years I was an assistant with Raj Kapoor Saab. Boney ji also knows me from that time. Fardeen Khan was a very good friend . I had not worked with Salman but I used to meet him and I was always very friendly with him. I had a bonding with him so he worked with me very lovingly .
When is the sequel No Entry Mein Entry starting? “We want to start in January 2025 after Bhool Bhulaiya 3 is out in the world.”
