13 Mohanlal Flicks That Got A B-Town Remake

'Drishyam' is the only Mohanlal flick to retain its original title when remade into Hindi. But Ajay Devgan was not even close to the performance of Mohanlal. When the lead male character's performance was the highlight in all the other remakes, here Tabu overpowered Ajay Devgan as IG Meera Deshmukh. Though Hindi remake was a commercial and critical success, it was not even close to the original, in the case of performance and visualization.

Though this first instalment in the Rohit Shetty's 'Golmaal' series can't be called as an exact remake of 'Kakkakuyil', the director retained most of the original movie. The blind couple portion was the most carried over part in this Hindi flick, while Rohit added his own sub plots to it. Both the flicks received great success among the audience. Interestingly, Priyadrashan got the inspiration for the blind couple portion in 'Kakkakuyil' from a Marathi play 'Ghar-Ghar'.

'Har Dil Jo Pyar Karega' by Raj Kanwar was the unofficial remake of 'Chandralekha'. This is also one of the few movies of Salman Khan in which he was widely praised for his acting. Rani Mukherji and Preity Zinta did the roles of Sukanya and Pooja Batra. Both the female leads performed well and this flick was a super hit at the box office. It gathered almost thrice the amount of its production cost.

When Priyadarshan remade this another classic of his into Hindi, he faced failure. Having Juhi Chawla and Arvind Swamy in the lead and produced by the Big B himself, didn't help the remake to be anywhere near a success, let alone achieve the status of the original. Rajinikanth's 'Muthu' is a more popular remake of 'Thenmavin Kombath'.

'Bhool Bhulaiyaa' is one film which brings immense respect for Priyadarshan. This is because, this was the only remake which did some level of justice towards 'Manichitrathazhu'. And Akshay Kumar as Dr. Aditya Shrivastava and Vidya Balan as Avni Chatruvedi/Manjulika were far better than what their counterparts did in other remakes. But non could give a challenge to the stupendous performance by Mohanlal and Shobana. 'Bhool Bhulaiyaa' was a commercial success.

Some films are like that, it should never be remade. 'Kilukkam' is definitely one of those. Priyan chose this blockbuster of his as his first step into Bollywood. And he would never forget this step, for all the wrong reasons. Priyan casted debutant Jay Mehta for the role played by Mohanlal and retained Revathi for her part. 'Muskurahat' turned out to be his biggest box office disaster and an entry into B-Town that he would never like to remember.

Sethumadhavan from 'Kireedam' is a character still fresh in the minds of Malayali audience. And Jackie Shroff's portrayal of the role in Priyadarshan's 'Gardish' was justifiable but not on the same level to that of Mohanlal. Priyan added few more sub plots in the script of Lohitadas for the remake. For many, 'Kireedam' is still a flick that shouldn't have been remade, as none of the remakes was able to deliver the emotional content like Sibi Malayil did in Malayalam.

'Vellanakalude Nadu', scripted by Sreenivasan, is one of the best political satires in Malayalam. And when Priyan remade it as 'Khatta Meetha' with Akshay Kumar in the lead, the movie totally failed to meet the high standards of the original. It was also criticised a lot as many considered it as an injustice done to the Malayalam version. Still this remake was a box office success. This was also the debut for Trisha in Bollywood.

Another classic of Malayalam cinema, 'Chithram' was remade into Hindi by K. Bapaiah and introduced Gauthami into Bollywood. Mithun Chakraborty was in the place of Mohanlal. But, on any level, the movie wasn't able to achieve the standards of the original flick. Chithram was another Mohanlal flick which was also remade into all the South Indian languages.

When we hear about 'Thalavattam', the first picture that comes into mind is of Jagathy Sreekumar as Attender Narayanan and his dialogue, "Ariyan melanjittu chodikkua, thaan aaruva?" But when Priyadarshan remade his epic movie into Hindi with Salman Khan and Kareena Kapoor in the lead, it failed totally. Fun fact here is that 'Kyon Ki' and 'Garam Masala' were released on the same day and this flick failed while the other turned out to be blockbuster. As many other Priyan movies, this flick was also an adaptation of a classic English novel, 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'.

Gopalakrishna Panicker from 'Sanmanassullavarkku Samadhanam' still remains as one of the best characters of Mohanlal. This Sathayan Anthikkad flick was remade into Hindi, this time also by Priyadarshan. Sunil Shetty in the boots of Mohanlal wasn't that impressive but the movie as a whole did justice to the original one. And this flick was remade into Tamil, Telugu and twice in Kannada.

Again, Priyadarshan remade his another super hit film in Bollywood. The success of 'Garam Masala' was as huge as of 'Boeing Boeing'. Interestingly, the Malayalam film itself was a spin off of a 1965 Hollywood movie by John Rich of the same title. Fun fact is that all three films were made after 20 years of the previous one and all the three are rated among the cult comedy flicks in the respective languages. And have to say, John Abraham as Sam in 'Garam Masala' is one of his career best performances.

Both the films are directed by Priyadarshan. In fact, Priyadarshan is the one director who has remade maximum Malayalam films in Bollywood. 'Poochakkoru Mookkuthi' was Priyan's first film and was based on Charles Dicken's play, 'The Strange Gentleman'. In the hindi remake, Akshye Khanna plays the role of Mohanlal. And as most of Priyan's movies, this was also a through out laughter riot backed with amazing performance by Paresh Rawal. This movie was remade into Telugu, Kannada and Bengali by different directors.