Ali Zafar: Climbing up the ladder

The multitalented actor to charm the audience in the remake of Chashme Buddoor.

KARACHI: Pakistani heart-throb Ali Zafar will be seen playing the lead in David Dhawan’s remake of 1981 romantic-comedy film Chashme Buddoor. Zafar has already proved his comic timing in Tere Bin Laden and this time around he is working with the king of comedy, Dhawan himself. The much-awaited venture is slated to release on August 31, according to Zafar’s publicist Ammara Hikmat. The actor would be playing the role of a musician Siddharth Parashar, which was originally played by Farooq Shaikh in the 1981 film.

Original Chashme Buddoor starred Shaikh, Deepti Naval, Rakesh Bedi, Ravi Baswani and Saeed Jaffrey. In the 2012 remake, however, one would see Zafar dancing and romancing Telugu star Taapsee Pannu. Besides these two actors, the film features Rishi Kapoor, Anupum Kher, Divyendu and Sidharth. The film has been shot in exotic locations such as Goa and Mauritius.

According to the grapevine, the film opens up with Zafar doing a dance number and this has been confirmed by the actor himself as he tweeted, “I had a wonderful time shooting for the movie and specially the songs in true Bollywood style.” The actor admits that when he was offered the role, he felt that it was a must to watch the original version again to pick up on the original flavour of the comic caper which continues to entertain movie enthusiasts even today.

It seems that just like Zafar impressed Dhawan with his portrayal of a young journalist Ali Hassan in Tere Bin Laden, Dhawan has also left quite an impression on Zafar with his directorial abilities. The actor is all praises for the director, who had a hit-jori with Govinda in the 1990s and together the two came up with comedy hits like Coolie no.1 and Raja Babu.

However, it was the original director Sai Paranjpye, who rewrote this film and found great similarities between Zafar and Shaikh. Paranjpye then asked Dhawan to consider Zafar for the remake. In a press conference, Paranjpye said, “Both Shaikh and Zafar are aristocratic and cultured. And there’s a certain masoomiyat (innocence) about them. When my co-writer Renuka and I began to rewrite Chashme Buddoor for contemporary times, we immediately thought of Zafar in Farooq’s role.” Music of the film has been given by Sajid-Wajid and rumour has it that Zafar has contributed to the music of the film too.

2012 has been a good year for Zafar, who was awarded the ‘Superstar of Tomorrow’ award at the Stardust for his role in the film Mere Brother Ki Dulhan and the Dadasaheb Phalke Academy Award, which unfortunately was snatched from him by an unknown person. This is Zafar’s third Bollywood film as the lead hero, Tere Bin Laden and London, Paris, New York being the other two.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 8^th, 2012.