This wouldn't have been a problem if you'd just listened to your mom and became a wrestler . . .

A brief review of Duplicate: AAAHH THIS MOVIE IS SO DUMB YOU GUYS OH MY GOSH I LOVE IT!!!!!

Ahem. Let me try that again, without shouting.

Shah Rukh Khan plays Babloo, an awkward but good-hearted Punjabi man who dreams of becoming the world's greatest chef, despite his overbearing mother (Farida Jalal, who is the mom in every other movie from the Nineties) pressuring him to take up the family business of wrestling. Step one is to get a job in the local hotel, supervised by the beautiful but snooty Sonia Kapoor (Juhi Chawla), who does not speak English as well as she thinks she does. Babloo wins the job (and Sonia's heart) by doing this:

 

(Oh for the days when I was so young and innocent that I didn't get the eggplant joke.)

Shah Rukh Khan also plays Manu, a vicious gangster who just escaped from prison and is hell-bent on taking revenge on his former partners, with the help of an array of cunning disguises and his sometime girlfriend, bar dancer Lily (Sonali Bendre).

Now, while Shah Rukh is best known for playing lovable goofball romantic heroes, he rose to stardom playing the villain, particularly in Darr (where he played an obsessive stalker targeting Juhi Chawla, and managed to completely overshadow the hero) and Baazigar (where he was hell-bent on taking revenge with the help of an array of cunning disguises.) In other words, this movie is pitting the two halves of Shah Rukh's career against each other, and because the comedy is so broad, at times we've got Shah Rukh Khan as a parody of Shah Rukh Khan doing a bad Shah Rukh Khan impression pitted against Shah Rukh Khan as a parody of etc. etc. etc.

But you don't need to know any of that to enjoy the film. The dumb gags translate a lot better than clever wordplay would, so you just need to be able to put up with unabashed silliness as Shah Rukh chews his way through two heaping servings of scenery, Everybody's Mom Farida Jalal gets to beat people up for once, Juhi lights up the screen with that smile, and Sonali Bendre actually plays things completely straight, giving a somewhat nuanced portrayal of the bad girl with a heart of . . . maybe not gold, but there's definitely some silver in there. Also more fight choreography directly ripped off from John Woo.