| Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman | |
| Director: | Aziz Mirza |
| Producer: | G. P. Sippy Vivek Vaswani (co-producer) |
| Starring: | Shah Rukh Khan Amrita Singh Juhi Chawla Nana Patekar |
| Music: | Jatin–Lalit |
| Editing: | Javed Sayyed |
| Cinematography: | Binod Pradhan |
| Studio: | Sippy Films |
| Runtime: | 152 minutes |
| Country: | India |
| Language: | Hindi |
| Gross: | (India) |
Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman is a 1992 Indian Hindi-language romantic comedy-drama film directed by Aziz Mirza starring Shah Rukh Khan, Amrita Singh, Juhi Chawla and Nana Patekar. Khan plays Raju, a young Diploma Holder in Civil Engineering from Darjeeling who comes to Bombay hoping to become a successful engineer.[1] The film emerged as a commercial success. The movie plot is loosely inspired by the 1987 movie The Secret of My Success[2] and the Raj Kapoor classic Shree 420 (1955). The rights to this film are owned by Khan's Red Chillies Entertainment.
At the 38th Filmfare Awards, Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman won Best Screenplay (Mirza and Lalwani), in addition to a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Patekar.
Raj Mathur is a young Diploma holder in civil engineering from Darjeeling who comes to Bombay with only one ambition — to become a big engineer. In Bombay, he arrives in a lower-middle-class locality in search of a distant relative, only to discover he has left years before. He spends the night at a temple, where he meets a philosophical streetside performer Jai, who becomes a close friend and gives him a place to stay.
With no connections and no experience, he finds it hard to get a job in the city until a beautiful girl Renu, finds him a job as a trainee with the construction company where she works as a secretary to Chabbria. They eventually fall in love with each other.
As he becomes successful he gets the attention of Chhabria's daughter Sapna. They spend more and more time together and he soon gets caught up in the rich and glamorous lifestyle. Sapna has fallen in love with Raju, but when she finds out that he loves Renu, she is heartbroken.
In the meantime, Raju's enemies are conspiring against him and they collapse a bridge which was under Raju's supervision. He gets the blame and soon realizes that the glamorous world of the rich is not what he wants. In the end, Raju decides to leave. Most people were asking Jai when Raju would come back. Jai told them when he turns his head around and looks at Renu, he will have no choice but to come back. Just a second earlier, Jai says "Palat" (meaning turn) then Raju turns and looks at Renu. He and Renu finally get reunited again.
The entire composition and background score was composed by Jatin–Lalit. Audio is available on Tips Music Films. The music of this album was a hit with songs like "Laveria Hua", "Dil Hai Mera Deewana" and "Seene Mein Dil Hai". The film's soundtrack album sold 1.8 million units in India, making it the eleven top-selling Bollywood music album of 1992. Most of the songs are sung by Kumar Sanu, along with Alka Yagnik, Sudesh Bhonsle, Sadhana Sargam and Jolly Mukherjee.
| Title | Singer(s) | Lyric | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Kya Hua" (Laveria Hua) | Kumar Sanu, Jolly Mukherjee, Alka Yagnik | Mahendra Dehlvi | |
| 2 | "Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman" | Kumar Sanu, Jolly Mukherjee, Sudesh Bhonsle, Sadhana Sargam | Dev Kohli | |
| 3 | "Dil Hai Mera Deewana" | Kumar Sanu | Dev Kohli | |
| 4 | "Kehti Hai Dil Ki Lagi" | Kumar Sanu, Alka Yagnik | Vinod Mahendra | |
| 5 | "Tu Mere Saath Saath" | Kumar Sanu, Alka Yagnik | Mahendra Dehlvi | |
| 6 | "Tham Tham Tham" | Kumar Sanu, Alka Yagnik | Manoj Darpan | |
| 7 | "Seene Mein Dil Hai" | Kumar Sanu, Alka Yagnik | Madan Pal | |
| 8 | "Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman" (Sad) | Sadhana Sargam | Dev Kohli |
G. P. Sippy initially wanted to cast a better-known actor than Shah Rukh Khan who was still a newcomer at the time. But the co-producer Vivek Vaswani eventually convinced him. However, Sippy decided to cap the budget of the film at only ₹0.6 crore. Vaswani talked to Juhi Chawla into playing the female lead. Chawla was an established actress at the time. Vaswani convinced her to take the role by promising that Khan was the "next Aamir Khan". Chawla had heard of Khan but had never met or seen him. She was taken aback by his skinny frame and untidy hair when they first met on the sets. That night, she called Vaswani and yelled, "Eeek! Is this the next Aamir?!"[3]
Khan got married during the making of the film. Still struggling financially, he borrowed suits from the film's costume department for the wedding. Aziz Mirza and Vaswani attended the ceremony.[3]
In India, the film grossed . This made it 1992's 22nd highest-grossing film in India.[4]
Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman was released in Japan on 17 May 1997. While Indian parallel cinema, including Satyajit Ray's Bengali films such as The Apu Trilogy, was known in Japan, Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman introduced the commercial masala film style, which was well received by Japanese audiences, with the film becoming a commercial success in the country. This sparked a short-lived boom in Indian films released in Japan, for the next two years, paving the way for the Japanese success of Rajinikanth's Muthu (1995) in 1998.[5]
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