The surprising thing about Banana Brothers (2003), is that
it gives me the opportunity to write a sentence that I never could have
imagined before: “The plot really doesn’t start moving until Johny
Lever shows up.” I can’t wait.
Banana Brothers is a comedy about the Indian immigrant experience in America. Anupam Kher plays Ketan, a hard working hotel clerk who is just trying to earn enough money to bring over his parents, wife, and children. After a bungled attempt at customer service, Ketan is fired and tossed out into the mean streets of San Francisco, where he is picked up by Baldev (Gursewek Mann), cab driver and (judging by the decor in his room) huge Gil Elvgren fan.
Baldev rents a room from Mrs. Chatterjee (Radha Saluja) and her divorcee daughter Reema (Seema Malhar.) Baldev and Reema have a little romance brewing, but she wants him to grow up and make something of himself before she’s willing to get serious. Still, she likes him enough to convince her mother to let Ketan move in as well.
And then . . . nothing much happens. There are humorous cultural misunderstandings. Baldev and Ketan get new jobs, and then get fired. Mrs. Chatterjee threatens to throw them out, and Reema convinces her to give therm another chance. Reema and Baldev fight, then kiss and make up. Ketan and Baldev fight, and then make up (but do not kiss). Ketan dodges the affections of Sabrina Malhotra (Mary L. Carter), a wealthy socialite who has fallen madly in love with him at first sight despite the fact that he’s played by Anupam Kher. Rinse and repeat.
Eventually, Ketan lets slip to Reema that Baldev has a wife in India, but does not mention that Baldev and his wife are separated and in the process of a divorce. Reema is not happy. Mrs. Chatterjee is even less happy, and the boys are promptly evicted.
Ketan decides that the reason why he and Baldev are constantly losing their jobs is that they are not meant to be working for other people, they’re meant to build something for themselves. They decide that they will open a store, and they will call it . . . Banana Brothers! (This is actually a Hindi pun, and not as random as it sounds.) Still, you can’t open a store without money, so the pair resolve to work very hard and not get fired quite so often.
They also decide to take a job working for Baldev’s sleazy cousin Rajinder (Gulshan Grover, and it’s important that I warn potential viewers of Banana Brothers that at one point Gulshan Grover lounges by the pool wearing a speedo.) Rajinder makes his money by organizing Bollywood stage shows, though it’s hard to see how he manages to stay in business being so blatantly corrupt; the current show, for instance, is advertised as featuring Shahrukh and Aamir Khan, but Rajinder has only booked Johny Lever. I’ve known Bollywood reviewers who have killed for less.
Still, the plot really doesn’t start moving until Johny Lever shows up. Ketan and Baldev are placed in charge of showing Johny around town, and they become friends. When it becomes clear that Rajinder doesn’t intend to pay anyone, the three team up for a wacky scheme to ensure that Johny Lever gets his money, rather than, say, threatening legal action. (It has to be a wacky scheme, because that way everyone can learn a valuable lesson at the end.)
I don’t know what the budget for Banana Brothers was, but I can guarantee it was low. Apart from Lever, Grover, and Kher, the cast are almost entirely unknowns. (Radha Saluja made (according to imdb) ten films in the seventies and early eighties, and Mary L. Carter has a number of TV and small film credits, but that’s about it.) More than that, the film looks cheap; even during the climactic concert sequence (which consists entirely of Johny Lever doing stand-up for five minutes while dressed as Elvis) stock footage is used for the audience.
The film was also apparently edited by a blind monkey. There are scenes obviously missing; Rajinder hires Baldev and Ketan, and the next time we see them they’re hanging out with Lever and continuing a running gag that we never saw start. Instead we get scenes like the sequence in which the boys take Lever to a strip club and he makes faces at the dancers. Continuity is also a problem; based on the footage we see, Ketan, Baldev, and Lever decide on their wacky scheme, change clothes and call Rajinder, and then change back.
There are a few bright points to Banana Brothers. Johny Lever is funnier than usual, though his “Brooklyn gangster” accent is painful, and his Chinese accent is both painful and offensive. (It’s painfensive!) Seema Malhar is cute as a button. And it’s nice, for once, to see a Bollywood movie show that a divorced person can find happiness that doesn’t involve remarrying the person they were divorced from.
Banana Brothers is a comedy about the Indian immigrant experience in America. Anupam Kher plays Ketan, a hard working hotel clerk who is just trying to earn enough money to bring over his parents, wife, and children. After a bungled attempt at customer service, Ketan is fired and tossed out into the mean streets of San Francisco, where he is picked up by Baldev (Gursewek Mann), cab driver and (judging by the decor in his room) huge Gil Elvgren fan.
Baldev rents a room from Mrs. Chatterjee (Radha Saluja) and her divorcee daughter Reema (Seema Malhar.) Baldev and Reema have a little romance brewing, but she wants him to grow up and make something of himself before she’s willing to get serious. Still, she likes him enough to convince her mother to let Ketan move in as well.
And then . . . nothing much happens. There are humorous cultural misunderstandings. Baldev and Ketan get new jobs, and then get fired. Mrs. Chatterjee threatens to throw them out, and Reema convinces her to give therm another chance. Reema and Baldev fight, then kiss and make up. Ketan and Baldev fight, and then make up (but do not kiss). Ketan dodges the affections of Sabrina Malhotra (Mary L. Carter), a wealthy socialite who has fallen madly in love with him at first sight despite the fact that he’s played by Anupam Kher. Rinse and repeat.
Eventually, Ketan lets slip to Reema that Baldev has a wife in India, but does not mention that Baldev and his wife are separated and in the process of a divorce. Reema is not happy. Mrs. Chatterjee is even less happy, and the boys are promptly evicted.
Ketan decides that the reason why he and Baldev are constantly losing their jobs is that they are not meant to be working for other people, they’re meant to build something for themselves. They decide that they will open a store, and they will call it . . . Banana Brothers! (This is actually a Hindi pun, and not as random as it sounds.) Still, you can’t open a store without money, so the pair resolve to work very hard and not get fired quite so often.
They also decide to take a job working for Baldev’s sleazy cousin Rajinder (Gulshan Grover, and it’s important that I warn potential viewers of Banana Brothers that at one point Gulshan Grover lounges by the pool wearing a speedo.) Rajinder makes his money by organizing Bollywood stage shows, though it’s hard to see how he manages to stay in business being so blatantly corrupt; the current show, for instance, is advertised as featuring Shahrukh and Aamir Khan, but Rajinder has only booked Johny Lever. I’ve known Bollywood reviewers who have killed for less.
Still, the plot really doesn’t start moving until Johny Lever shows up. Ketan and Baldev are placed in charge of showing Johny around town, and they become friends. When it becomes clear that Rajinder doesn’t intend to pay anyone, the three team up for a wacky scheme to ensure that Johny Lever gets his money, rather than, say, threatening legal action. (It has to be a wacky scheme, because that way everyone can learn a valuable lesson at the end.)
I don’t know what the budget for Banana Brothers was, but I can guarantee it was low. Apart from Lever, Grover, and Kher, the cast are almost entirely unknowns. (Radha Saluja made (according to imdb) ten films in the seventies and early eighties, and Mary L. Carter has a number of TV and small film credits, but that’s about it.) More than that, the film looks cheap; even during the climactic concert sequence (which consists entirely of Johny Lever doing stand-up for five minutes while dressed as Elvis) stock footage is used for the audience.
The film was also apparently edited by a blind monkey. There are scenes obviously missing; Rajinder hires Baldev and Ketan, and the next time we see them they’re hanging out with Lever and continuing a running gag that we never saw start. Instead we get scenes like the sequence in which the boys take Lever to a strip club and he makes faces at the dancers. Continuity is also a problem; based on the footage we see, Ketan, Baldev, and Lever decide on their wacky scheme, change clothes and call Rajinder, and then change back.
There are a few bright points to Banana Brothers. Johny Lever is funnier than usual, though his “Brooklyn gangster” accent is painful, and his Chinese accent is both painful and offensive. (It’s painfensive!) Seema Malhar is cute as a button. And it’s nice, for once, to see a Bollywood movie show that a divorced person can find happiness that doesn’t involve remarrying the person they were divorced from.
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