No 1 (film series)

Films

The series consists of six films, starting from Coolie No. 1 in 1995. The last installment in the series was Jodi No.1 released in 2001.

Coolie No. 1 (1995)

Shaadiram Gharjode (Sadashiv Amrapurkar) is once humiliated by Hoshiyar Chand (Kader Khan) when Shaadiram goes to inform him about a family wanting to marry their son to Hoshiyar's daughter. Hoshiyar Chand insults them as he wants both his daughters to marry into the richest family. Gharjode decides to teach Hoshiyar Chand a lesson: He meets a coolie called Raju (Govinda) and they go to Hoshiyar Chand's village pretending to be a rich family. Hoshiyar is impressed and he wants his daughter Malti (Karisma Kapoor) to marry Raju. This leads to humorous situations in the climax.

Hero No. 1 (1997)

Rajesh Malhotra (Govinda) is the son of a wealthy businessman Dhanraj Malhotra (Kader Khan). However, he is not happy at his home since his father does not let him live his life his way. He escapes from his home and reaches Europe. Meena (Karishma Kapoor) is the granddaughter of Dinanath (Paresh Rawal) and has secured a scholarship to study in Europe. She travels to Europe with her aunt Shannu (Himani Shivpuri).

Rajesh and Meena meet and fall in love. Dhanraj Malhotra reaches Europe in search of his son with assistant Sharma (Rakesh Bedi) and discovers his son is in love. They return to India so that Rajesh and Meena can get married. However, destiny has something else in store for them. As Dhanraj is on his way to discuss about his son's marriage, he accidentally splashes sludge on a pedestrian and both end up quarrelling. To Dhanraj's surprise, the pedestrian unfortunately turns out to be Dinanath himself, who, raged with the incident, refuses to Dhanraj's proposal of his son's marriage.

Dinanath's house has a problem. They are a joint family and recently the servant Babu (Shakti Kapoor) ran away. They are now in search for a new servant. Rajesh, on realising that his father did a mess up of the meeting with Dinanath, decides to disguise as a servant named Raju and work at Dinanath's home.

Everybody in that home has some problem or the other, which Raju (Govinda) solves through his wit. Dinanath's elder son Vidya Nath (Tiku Talsania) is teacher in a local college, but is always late and bears the College Principal's brunt. Raju helps him when he is about to be transferred. Diannath's second son (Anil Dhawan), is an insurance agent but does not have many customers. Raju helps him by asking all employees in his father's office to open insurance policies with Vidya Nath. The younger son, Pappi (Satish Shah) is a struggling music composer. Raju makes him prepare some good music which he uses as his own and gets a break for a film's music. The elder daughter, Shanno is not in good terms with her husband, so stays away from him in her father's home. Raju makes her meet her husband and unites them again. The younger granddaughter, Dimple (Prachi) is a party animal. Raju one day saves her from few rowdies and she turns into a homely girl.

Dinanath is impressed with Raju's acts but one day he finds some valuables missing from his house. Police arrive and find Dhanraj, in the guise of a Chowkidar (portraying Raju's uncle), hiding behind the fridge. Raju and Dhanraj are insulted by the family members and are about to be taken away when Meena reveals Raju's true identity and the sacrifices he has been through for his love.

Dinanath realises of Meena and Raju's true love for each other. In the last scene, as he is going in his car along with Meena to Dhanraj's place, Dhanraj comes along with Rajesh in their way and nearby sludge comes splashing over Dhanraj, thus completing Dinanath's revenge. Rajesh and Meena get married.

Aunty No. 1 (1998)

Sandhya (Raveena Tandon) is in search of her prince charming and when Gopi (Govinda) comes to know about this he pretends to be a rich prince and Sandhya starts dating him. But soon she comes to know that Gopi is a poor man but nevertheless they start loving each other. Meanwhile, Gopi's friends Abhyankar (Harish) and Raja (Rohit Kumar) request Gopi to become an Aunty for a big favour. He does so with hilarious results, as two men (Kader Khan and Saeed Jaffrey) start loving him. This leads to humorous situations.

Anari No.1 (1999)

Naive Raja (Govinda) is employed as a lowly waiter in a hotel. One day he serves and looks after a wealthy businessman K.K. (Kader Khan), who lends him a suit, and gives him some money, so that he could find a rich woman to woo and marry. Raja thinks Sapna (Raveena Tandon) is wealthy and successfully woos her and wins her heart, only to find out that she too is on the lookout for a rich prince charming. She thought Raja was the rich, debonair, and eligible bachelor Rahul Saxena (Govinda).

With the help of garage owner, Sattarbhai (Satish Shah), all three of them concoct a plot to kidnap Rahul Saxena, hold him for ransom, while Raja takes his place. After kidnapping him, Raja does take his place with Rahul's family, his stepmom, Sharda, dad Dhanraj, uncle, aunt, and sweetheart Sona (Simran). Sona happens to be the daughter of Raja's mentor K.K., and this arouses anger with K.K. when he finds out that Raja has chosen Sona to seduce. Then things start to go wrong as Raja himself gets kidnapped, as he is mistaken for Rahul.

Beti No.1 (2000)

The story of Beti No.1 deals with how our society has given women a very inferior position. It is the story of Durga Devi (Aruna Irani) who has three sons, Ram (Ashok Saraf), Laxman (Laxmikant Berde) and Bharat (Govinda). Durga Devi has said that she will bequeath all her wealth to her first grandson however her first two sons, Ram and Laxman who are both married have so far only produced daughters, due to this both the wives and their daughters are shunned from the family.

In the meantime, the youngest son Bharat starts to romance Priya (Rambha), a girl of poor stock who works at a telephone booth. They fall in love, however, Durga Devi objects to Bharat engaging in a relationship with an impoverished girl. To prevent Durga Devi from discovering their relationship, Bharat's father, Dashrath (Prem Chopra), provides him and Priya with two lakhs, and they subsequently marry. They live happily together until Durga Devi discovers that they have been deceiving her, and she lashes out at Dashrath and Bharat. Durga Devi fires her maid and makes the new bride, Priya do all the household chores.

As time passes, Priya falls pregnant and is foretold that her child will bring great happiness in the family by Durga Devi's father. Everyone assumes that this means Priya is carrying a son as a daughter could not possibly bring happiness to the family. Durga Devi's behaviour suddenly changes towards Priya and Priya is treated like a princess as she is carrying the requisite heir. However, on a visit to the doctor, Bharat and Priya are informed that they are having a girl and not a son. They soon realise that if Durga Devi ever finds out that they are having a girl then she will once again treat Priya poorly so they decide to play along with the story that she is having a boy. At the time of Priya's delivery, Bharat's friend Mulayamchand's wife is also having a baby. Both wives go into labour together with Priya delivering a girl and Mullu's wife delivering a boy. Durga Devi suddenly collapses and ends up in the same hospital. Bharat's Father sees Bharat holding Mullu's son in his arms, mistakes him for his grandson and runs with the child to revive the ailing Durga Devi. Three days later, Durga Devi insists on taking her son home. Bharat persuades Mullu and his wife to live closer to their home and convinces Mullu and his wife to let them keep their son during the day and would be returned to them during the night and in turn they could keep their daughter during the day and would be taken back at night.

The story goes on and on with the two mothers running from house to house trying to soothe their own respective child until one day they are caught by Durga Devi where she comes to the cliched realisation that she made a mistake in wanting a son and accepts her granddaughters.

Jodi No.1 (2001)

Jai (Sanjay Dutt) and Veeru (Govinda) are good friends and also partners in crime, thus their friendship is named Jodi No. 1. They first gain the confidence of people and later con them. But soon have to run from Bombay after an encounter with a local Bhai. Because they end up having a brawl with his younger brother (Rajat Bedi) and they by accident kill him in a night club. While on the run, Jai and Veeru meet Vikram Jeet (Aashif Sheikh), an NRI, who is on his way to work as a manager, in Goa, for Rai Bahadur (Anupam Kher), a wealthy businessman who owns a beer factory.

Jai pretends to be Vikram Jeet and both he and Veeru move in Rai Bahadur's house intending to be-friend then rob him. However they fall in love with Rai Bahadur's daughters and in a series of hilarious scenes save the family from Sir John.In the end while Jai is stealing money from Rai to release Veeru from Sir John the entire Rai clan is watching the news and find out that Jai and Veeru are not who they claim to be but con men who deceive people. In the end Rai then lets Jai go with the money to save Veeru and all goes well and they marry the daughters of Rai.

Reception

Ratings collected from film review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes & IMDb.

Coolie No. 1 (1995)

Hero No. 1 (1997)

Aunty No. 1 (1998)

Anari No.1 (1999)

Beti No.1 (2000)

Jodi No.1 (2001)