Munna Bhai M.B.B.S.

<p>Murliprasad Sharma, known by the title ‘ ‘ ( means brother or don in the ), is a gangster in who runs an extortion racket. Every year, with the help of his aide, Sarkeshwar “Circuit” Sharma, and his gang, he converts his hide-out into a fully-functioning hospital to fool Munna’s visiting parents Hariprasad “Hari” Sharma and Parvati Sharma, who believe Munna is a real doctor. Meanwhile, one of Hari’s annual visits with Parvati culminates in Hari bumping into childhood acquaintance Dr. Jagdish Asthana, who is the dean of a local medical college and had founded their village’s first medical centre. Hari proposes to Asthana that they get his daughter and Munna’s childhood friend “Chinki” married to him. Asthana agrees, even though Munna asks her to reject him, lest his parents discover the truth. However, when his maid reacts shockingly to Munna’s photo, Asthana realizes the truth and exposes Munna to Hari and Parvati. Humiliated at their son’s lack of a real vocation, they leave the city and return home. Munna vows to become a doctor to get back at Asthana but unknowingly ends up enrolling into his college with the help of home surgeon Dr. Rustom Pavri. Certain that Munna has cheated his way through the entrance exam, but lacking real evidence, he is forced to allow Munna to study there. Upon becoming a student, Munna falls back into his ways by enforcing his regime of “common-sense treatment”, directly challenging Asthana’s conventional opinions to get under his skin. Despite the school’s emphasis on mechanical, cartesian, impersonal, and often bureaucratic relationships between doctors and patients, Munna, who constantly seeks to impose a more empathetic and almost holistic regimen around himself, clashes with professors over their lack of empathy towards patients, especially those who are deemed incurable by conventional medicine. His behavior is well-received by the hospital staff and patients, who are able to see the good-natured intent behind his anti-establishment actions. Asthana, perceiving this as chaos, is unable to stop it and resorts to to deal with his stress. Munna simultaneously develops a friendly relationship with Dr. Suman, who works at the hospital, unaware that she is “Chinki”, an ignorance she hilariously exploits to a point where he gives up on marriage plans with “Chinki” to exact revenge on Asthana after Suman sends her doctor friend to masquerade, and uses old-fashioned kindness and love to ‘cure’ many patients at the hospital, including Karan, a suicidal youngster he met on his first day of college, and Dr. Pavri’s father, who at one point fell ill and short of a desire to live. He even thanks an underappreciated janitor and arranges to bring a inside the patient ward to cheer up Zaheer, a man dying from stomach cancer who he befriends in the process. When Asthana learns about the stripper episode, he sees this as a potential reason to expel Munna on disciplinary grounds but fails to do so after Munna injures himself to stay back. However, after he recovers, the hospital staff, patients and students stand in Asthana’s way and refuse to let Munna leave. Munna is then made to take a test before the entire college the next day to keep his enrolment. Later that night, Zaheer dies; still in shock, Munna gives up at a point during the test and leaves; in the process, Anand Banerjee, a paraplegic patient who has been brain-dead for the last 12 years, comes back to life. Suman realizes Munna as the miracle behind Anand’s recovery and gives a heartfelt speech, defending his actions. Asthana, finally moved, is forced to change his opinion of Munna. Munna does not become a doctor, but news of his ‘miraculous’ treatments reaches his parents. They return to the city and forgive him. Munna marries Suman after learning of her true identity as “Chinki”, and together, they open a real hospital in Munna’s family village. Circuit also gets married a year later and has a son nicknamed “Short Circuit”. Asthana resigns as the dean and becomes the head doctor, employing Munna’s methods, while Rustom succeeds him. As the film concludes, Anand, restored to normal mental health, narrates the story to a few children at the hospital as he is about to leave for Kolkata. In an interview, Hirani discussed how the idea for the film emerged from his interaction with some friends who were medical students. Later, he also had the opportunity to interact with a lot of medical professionals when some members of his family became sick. These experiences gave birth to the idea for the film. Hirani initially conceptualised the tale of as a series, and approached to play the lead role. The actor turned down the offer citing that he was busy with other commitments. After Hirani chose to make into a film, during the scripting stage, he wanted to play the lead role. However, was later cast as Munna along with as Zaheer but due to his back problems Khan was forced to turn down the film. Nevertheless, the end credits of the film thank Khan for his inputs into the script. Hirani also narrated the script to during the time he was in talks with Shahrukh Khan. Khan and Rai were working together on at the time. was considered for the role, but in the end Sanjay Dutt took the role as Munna, which ultimately gave him an image make over and helped change the public perception of the controversial superstar; his real-life father returned to the silver screen after 10 years to play Munna’s father. This is the first and only film in which real-life father and son Sunil and Sanjay appear together, although they both appeared in (1971), (1981) and (1993) but not in any scenes together. The original choice for Circuit’s role was . took over the role which proved to be a turning point for his career. The scenes of the Medical College were shot at the Agriculture College of and . The film has a similar premise to the 1998 American film , starring . Producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra denies there being a resemblance, and says that he had not watched the film before the release of . Years later, accusations of plagiarism resurfaced on social media when some netizens highlighted scene-to-scene copies. Hirani did not have a big budget to shoot the film. As a result, he had to change the way certain scenes were shot. For example, the film ends with stills of Munna Bhai’s wedding. Hirani was told that setting up a wedding stage and making a wedding outfit for Gracie Singh would cost him several thousand rupees. To save on some of that money, Hirani arranged to have the stills shot on an actual wedding stage set up for a real wedding near the sets. The production team reached an agreement with the wedding hall management and used their stage after a wedding ended. The music is composed by . Lyrics for the songs are penned by and . Vocals for Dutt were supplied by . According to the Indian trade website , with around 1,000,000 units sold, this film’s soundtrack album was the year’s one of the highest-selling. was the recipient of a number of awards. At the , it received the , , the , and (for Warsi) in addition to four other nominations. It won a number of awards at the 2004 including Best Debuting Director, (for Warsi), Best Cinematography, and Best Dialogue. Other ceremonies include the 2004 where it won the and the 2004 where it won the . In February 2004, after the success of , decided to work on his next project. He, along with his co-writer , started to write the script of their new film. They didn’t want the script to include Munna Bhai, but after they wrote it, the script eventually turned out to be of . , , and were to reprise their roles but after the death of Sunil in May 2005, Hirani decided that the film will only have Sanjay & Warsi to reprise their characters from and other actors like and were cast in new roles. was released on 1 September 2006 and turned out to be a huge success. The film was remade in Telugu as (2004), in Tamil as (2004), in Kannada as (2007) and in Sinhala as (2017).</p>