This Salman Khan hit had a theme of 'naughty husbands'

Tempted spouses with their better halves away from homes are great characters for sitcom writers in Indian cinema. Such husbands, forced to almost commit the unmentionable sin of adultery are shown battling their demons, fantasise about what can happen and finally manage to kiss and make up with their suspicious wives. In the meanwhile, the film is packed with seductresses wanting to snare the faithful, the philandering ones want to turn a new leaf and the male-centric screenplay turns out to be a massive entertainer, most often than not.

The 2005 Hindi flick ' No Entry' is one such film which has its roots originally in the 1975 Tamil film 'Yaarukku Maappillai Yaaro' helmed by S P Muthuraman, the director who is known to have worked with Superstar Rajinikanth in 25 films. In 1998, Rajendra Prasad and Roja were featured in its remake titled ' Mee Aayana Jagratha' which flopped. This film was also remade with modern twists with Prabhu Deva and other stars in 2002 as 'Charlie Chaplin', a raging hit with great music and songs. In 2003 it was reprised in Telugu with Venu and Srikanth by Allu Aravind and Ashwini Dutt as 'Pellam Oorelithe', hailed as a clean comedy and doing average business.

Anees Bazmee, a known name in Hindi cinema had Boney Kapoor backing him for its Hindi version and it had a great cast of Anil Kapoor, Salman Khan apart from Bipasha Basu and Lara Dutta, the then hotties of Hindi cinema. Suitably spicing it up to pander to the taste of the Hindi-speaking audience, Bazmee made the film the biggest success of Hindi cinema in the year as it went on to collect Rs 22 crore. Worldwide, it went on to collect around Rs 100 crore, a very high figure, 15 years ago.

In many ways, it was the first of the films in which Salman Khan played a role with comic overtones, which became a trademark of his in his subsequent hits to follow over the next decade. The theme which bordered on adult comedy was naturally lapped up by many other film industries – from Bengali at one end and Malayalam at the other, who had mixed success but managed a great initial draw and publicity to their ventures when it hit the silver screens over the years. Of course, in these days, straying husbands are no more hot material as OTT ventures are more in-your-face with graphic scenes which leave nothing to imagination. This naturally has raised questions whether we need to get a little modest and indirect when it comes to explicit scenes showing sex and intimacy as the lockdown has produced mixed audiences in Indian drawing rooms, from the super senior citizens to toddlers.