This is the perfect comedy! It has all the hallmarks of the genre. A delightful, optimistic young hero. A tempestuous young heroine. A stiff and prejudiced father. A garrulous uncle. A tough and sentimental aunt. Dopey friends. Misunderstandings. Seemingly unending conflict and a hilarious resolution.Amol Palekar shines as the hero, Ram. His character is absurdly unrealistic. He is a feckless youth and a devoted nephew and brother. He has a wicked sense of humour and strong religious devotion. He is a brilliant accountant and has a raft of boring opinions of Kabir. He is an incredibly hard worker and yet has a thriving social life. He loves sport more than anything else, but will sacrifice it for a job and for love. Ram is a chameleon, a supreme actor, and Palekar is utterly convincing as each of Ram's altar egos.The rest of the main cast are equally brilliant. Deven Verma is the best friend a young guy could ask for. Bindiya Goswami has just the right balance of disobedience and daughterly devotion to be utterly charming. Dina Pathak is hilarious as Kamla, the part-time actress who climbs through kitchen windows. And Utpal Dutt is nearly unbeatable as the fierce potential father-in-law, who thinks that only men with moustaches and without hobbies or nicknames have any value in modern India. He reminded me of Walter in Sterne's classic novel "Tristram Shandy," a man of great status and absurd beliefs, but withal extremely likable.Like all the best comedies, this one takes place in a world just a little bit different from our own. Everyone is flawed, but there is no harm in that. Everyone misunderstands one another, but in the end all difficulties melt in the breeze.The plot unfolds breezily, and complication piles on complication as Ram's schemes get increasingly involved. I was grinning or laughing the whole way through, and I think you will too. 10/10

A comedy of errors in which a lie and a mistaken identity sets into motion a domino effect of such proportions that every time a character faces an obstacle your heart leaps into your mouth, only to fall back with a thud because you continuously feel the urge to laugh uncontrollably.Like any Hrishikesh Mukherjee movie, Gol Maal tells the story of next door people in the most heart-warming manner with a good dose of clean and genuine humor that takes a clean bite at the culture and traditions of middle-class India. Ramprasad Sharma (Amol Palekar), a chartered accountant by profession, is a colorful personality who is a sports junkie in the afternoons and an amateur singer in the evenings. With the help of his uncle he lands up a job at a trading firm and embarks on a mission to please his boss Bhavani Shankar (Uttpal Dutt in a hilarious turn) because his whole identity is fake considering his boss disapproves fashion, vehemently opposes the obsession of sports among the youth (although he is a secret sports fan himself), dislikes people who abbreviate their names and use recommendation to get a job, encourages purity of language, and sees mustache as a symbol of pride and a window to the soul. Ramprasad has none of the "good" qualities sans the mustache, his only saving grace, which he ends up losing in an attempt to save his skin after being spotted at a Hockey match by his boss. Remembering the plot of a movie an actor friend of his is doing, he manages to convince Bhavani Shankar that it was not him whom he had seen at the stadium but his jobless, good-for-nothing, clean shaven identical twin Laxmanprasad Sharma aka Lucky. So, during the day Ramprasad works as a straight-as-a-reed worker bee quoting quasi intellectual teachings of his imaginary father and in the evening takes on the role of his mustacheless notorious twin brother who teaches music to the boss's daughter and also romances her on the sly.Hrishikesh Mukherjee, once again succeeds in creating a complex story around some simple and some quirky characters like Mrs. Kamala Srivastav (Dina Pathak) – a reluctant mother for hire and Bade Babu (Yunus Parvez), a not so bright colleague of Ramprasad whose favorite pastime is pulling hair out of his nostrils. He went so far as to mount this broad satire on the platform of Bollywood itself wherein an actor friend of Ramprasad Deven (Deven Varma as himself) mouthpieces the idea that life indeed is stranger than fiction as depicted in the movies and does the humble job of furnishing the fake mustache to the protagonist, the complex results of which sets the whole hanky-panky business into motion.The rest of the cast is mediocre except for Shobha Khote and David in minor roles. Bindiya Goswami as the love interest only shines in her introduction scene and has nothing better to do except look lovelorn. Needless to say, it is the comic timing between Uttpal Dutt and Amol Palekar that is the star of the movie and the two went on to do three more films together with mixed results.

This is one of my favorite Hindi comedies of all time, as it is completely family friendly, has some genuinely hilarious moments and adheres to a subtlety in comedy which seems lost in the gyrating Govinda era of Hindi comedies.This is one of the few movies one can watch with the entire family and everyone, from the oldest to the youngest member, will enjoy it.A comedy of errors, our story begins with young CA grad Ram Prakash Sharma who is looking for modest employment. Enter his uncle, who advises him on how to behave to gain a position at the uncle's childhood friend, Bhawani Shankar's, company. Unfortunately, Bhawani Shankar is a man of strict tastes and fancies all young men of the time to be lazy and far too preoccupied with time-wasting activities such as sports, music and parties. Ram Prakash presents himself (according to the tutelage of his uncle) as the quintessential, too-good-to-be-true young man with no time for leisure and frivolities and all the time in the world for work and the serious things in life. Unfortunately, Ram Prakash's true self cannot be suppressed and he schemes to get out of work to watch a hockey match. Unluckiloy for him, Bhawani Shankar happens to see him at said match and confronts him, because of which Ram Prasad is forced to invent a twin, Laxman aka Lucky who is the very epitome of the sort of young man Bhawani Shankar detests. Things get further complicated when Ram Prasad is forced to invent a mother, having told Bhawani Shankar that she is still alive and ill as an excuse to go to the hockey match. What ensues due to the confusion is a tangled web of good old fashioned mix-ups and lies to keep the whole thing from falling in around Ram Prasad's ears.I would definitely recommend the movie to anyone who enjoys an interesting, non Givinda-esquire comedy, and of course, anyone who enjoys music as this movie has the very well known and loved Kishore Kumar number, "Aane Wala Pal".

This is the best comedy I have seen so far. Neither has such a comedy ever been produced again, not it will be. Utpal dutt is just great and so is Amol Palekar. Two great actors and very well supported by Dina Pathak. Bollywood, why have you stopped making such excellent movies. I have seen it 20 times and each time I see it, I like it even more. I know almost all main dialogues of the movie now. Wondeful film and must watch. I would give it a 10/10.