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Jangal Mein Mangal
India 1972
produced by Rajendra Bhatia for Kiron Productions
directed by Rajendra Bhatia
starring Kiran Kumar, Reena Roy, Sonia Sahni, Pran, Balraj Sahni, Chandrashekhar, Gulshan Bawra, Jagdish Raj, Upendra Trivedi, Arvind Trivedi, Paintal, V. Gopal, Chaman Puri, Bharat Kapoor, Birbal, Krishan Dhawan, Jayshree T., Padma Khanna, Meena T., Narendra Nath, H.L. Pardesi, Yogesh Chhabra, Bhatnagar, Menon, Shashi Kiran, Ashok Thanki, Bhanumati, Rajni Gupta, Sonu, Chanda, Arpana, Mona Saxena, Uma Khosla, Pramatesh Mehta, Prem, Neel Oberoi
story by K.P. Kottarakara, screenplay by S. Khalil, dialogue by Vrajendra Gaur, music by Jaikishan Dayabhai Pankal, Shankarshingh Raghuwanshi
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Due to some mix-up, 9 Catholic schoolgirls accompanied by professor
Laxmi (Sonia Sahni) and sister Sophia (Meena Roy) and 9 students
accompanied by woman-hating Ret. Col. Das (Pran) see themselves forced to
stay in the same hostel. Now the kids don't mind one bit, but their
guardians do ... until of course, professor Laxmi and Ret. Col. Das fall
in love. That's only one layer of the story, another has local
businessman Thakur trying to get hold of a local decaying temple,
something that can be prevented by the combined forces of above boys and
girls. Why does Thakur want this? Because he knows there's a vast treasure
hidden somewhere underground. At night, it seems the neighbourhood of the
temple is patrolled by a skull-headed ghost, too, who occasionally kills
people, invariably playing into the hands of Thakur, so ... hmmm. So why
doesn't Thakur just grab the treasure and then bugger off? Because only
one man, Thomas (Balraj Sahni), knows where the treasure is. Thomas has
been Thakur's captive for the last two years, too, but he won't talk. But
now his daughter, Sister Sophia, is here, and Thakur figures by abducting
her he has something to blackmail his captive with. It works, too, but
Thakur is a bit of an asshole, so he has both Thomas and Sophia killed,
then even wants to use Sophia's coffin to smuggle the treasure out of town
... but our students prevent this just in time for a happy ending. Oh,
and the skull-headed ghost? It was Thakur's servant of course. The
best Masala films work because they take ingredients from many genres to
create an original blend that covers quite some ground. Unfortunately, Jangal
Mein Mangal is not one of the better Masala movies, so instead of
really fusing its genre ingredients (teen comedy, love story, horror,
treasure hunt, murder mystery), they are just put next to each other,
which causes the narrative to repeatedly wander off and never create any
sort of real tension to make the main story work. Add to this that most of
the comedy is pretty puerile and the horror/mystery seems like nothing
more than an episode of Scooby Doo - but 5 times as long and
with the baddie revealed way too soon -, and you got yourself a pretty
forgettable movie.
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