Andaz Apna Apna

Amar and Prem are two daydreamers with a common aim: getting rich by marrying a rich heiress, Raveena Bajaj, daughter of the wealthy Ram Gopal Bajaj. Raveena travels to India with her secretary and friend, Karishma. She is in India to find a suitable groom. The men run into each other on a bus bound for Ooty, where Raveena lives, and soon realise that they have a common goal. The two then fail at various attempts to woo the woman.

Meanwhile, they decide to insinuate themselves in her house. Amar pretends to be a man who has lost his memory after getting hit by Raveena, while Prem pretends to be a doctor. The boys do not know that Raveena and Karishma switched identities. The secretary "Karishma" is the real Raveena while the rich heiress "Raveena" is actually Karishma. Raveena switched her identity because she wanted to find a boy who will love her, not her money.

Nobody is aware that Ram Gopal has a twin brother called Shyam Gopal Bajaj, alias Teja. Teja is a criminal who has taken much money from Crime Master Gogo. Teja hopes to land the riches himself by kidnapping his brother and posing as Ram. He has also planted his cronies Robert and Bhalla in the household. Robert and Bhalla attempt to kill Raveena multiple times to no success.

Ram arrives in India and Teja plans to steal Ram's money converted in diamonds. Ram sees through the real nature of Amar and Prem, thus declining Raveena's marriage to either of them. The duo plan to fake a kidnapping where they will heroically "rescue" Ram. Unknown to them, Teja has also planned to kidnap Ram.

Teja succeeds in having Ram kidnapped. Amar and Prem go to rescue Ram, but Teja makes them believe that he is Ram and enters Ram's household. Initially, nobody suspects a thing, but the girls soon smell a rat. The boys have discovered the real identities of the girls. Prem has fallen for the real Raveena, while Amar has fallen for the real Karishma.

The girls tell their suspicions to the boys. The boys tail Teja and soon find out the truth. Here, Ram tricks Teja and escapes the prison. However, the boys mistake him for Teja, resulting in Ram being imprisoned again – with Amar and Prem. However, Amar and Prem succeed in convincing Robert and Bhalla that Ram is Teja.

The boys, along with Robert and Bhalla, stop Teja. Meanwhile, throughout the film, Robert and Bhalla are constantly harassed by Gogo who's demanding his money back. He soon discovers about the diamonds and kidnaps Ram along with Raveena and Karishma. At Gogo's lair, the boys try to control the situation along with Ram. In a comic standoff, the real motive of each villain is revealed. However, due to the smartness of the boys, police raid Gogo's lair, thus rounding up all the criminals. Ram gets his diamonds back and finally decides to let Karishma and Raveena marry Amar and Prem respectively.

• Aamir Khan as Amar manohar/ Amar singh(fake)
• Salman Khan as Prem bhopali/prem Khurrana(fake)
• Raveena Tandon as Raveena (fake) / Karishma
• Karisma Kapoor as Karishma (fake) / Raveena Bajaj
• Paresh Rawal as Ram Gopal Bajaj / Shyam "Teja" Gopal Bajaj (dual role)
• Shakti Kapoor as Crime Master Gogo
• Viju Khote as Robert
• Shehzad Khan as Vinod Bhalla
• Jagdeep as Bankelal Bhopali
• Deven Verma as Murli Manohar
• Mehmood as Johnny
• Javed Khan as Anand Akela
• Tiku Talsania as Inspector Pandey
• Harish Patel as Sevaram ji
• Juhi Chawla as herself (guest appearance)
• Govinda as himself (guest appearance)

After the success of his debut film Ghayal (1990), director Rajkumar Santoshi was approached by producer Vinay Kumar Sinha for a film. The latter wanted to make a film with Aamir Khan.[5] Having made a film on a serious subject, Santoshi wanted to make a comedy film now.[6] It was then decided that he would write a story about two warring buddies, the human versions of Tom and Jerry.[5] Santoshi wrote the screenplay with Dilip Shukla, also modelling the characters on Archie comics.[7] Despite the film feeling impromptu, every scene and dialogue was in the script.[7]

Santoshi then decided to cast Salman Khan followed by then relative newcomers Karishma Kapoor and Raveena Tandon as the female leads along with Paresh Rawal in a double role.[6] Santoshi finished the script after the casting.[8] He also wrote several dialogues on the set which were in his mind and not in the script.[7] Amrish Puri was supposed to play the role of Mogambo's younger brother, Zorambo. But due to the length of the film, the character was removed.[7] Sunny Deol was supposed to do a cameo in the film, who was not available at that time. It was done by Govinda.[7]

Initially Salman Khan wanted more screen space than the other, but later agreed to have the same amount of screen time.[9] Tinnu Anand was offered the role of the villain "Gogo", but could not do it because of date issues.[8] It eventually played by Shakti Kapoor. While shooting, Santoshi had to call for a cut as almost the entire crew including the direcor of photography laughed so hard that it shook the camera.[7] The Muhurat shot was done by cricketer Sachin Tendulkar.[9] Andaz Apna Apna took three years in making, which resulted in some continuity issues.[8][9] Ishwar Bidri was the director of photography while V. N. Mayekar served as the editor.[10]

Andaz Apna Apna
Soundtrack album by Tushar Bhatia
Released	11 April 1994 (1994-04-11)[11]
Genre	Feature film soundtrack
Label	Tips Music
External audio Audio Jukebox on YouTube

The film has four songs composed by Tushar Bhatia with lyrics by Majrooh Sultanpuri.

The film only did moderately well at box-office; it was able to recover its budget cost mainly due to business from big cities, but did not turn out to be a massive hit contrary to everyone's expectations. It earned an excess of ₹5 crore nett in India.[12] Its total domestic gross was ₹8.18 crore , and its overseas gross was $150,000, bringing its worldwide gross to ₹8.653 crore (equivalent to ₹46 crore or US$6.4 million in 2019).[3] It was the year's 17th highest-grossing Indian film.[13]

The lack of publicity and tough competition from other films of that year including Laadla, Mohra, Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!, Krantiveer and 1942: A Love Story were reasons for its average business.[14] Santoshi also attributes the failure to the fact that the film was not released and distributed well due to a new distributor.[7] All of these films were very strong in their box office presence and Andaz Apna Apna, belonging to a different genre, could not compete well. It has however, in subsequent years, achieved a cult classic status among Hindi audiences.[5][6]

Several dialogues from this film like "Teja main hu. Mark Idhar hai", "Crime Master Gogo, Mogambo ka Bhatija", "Do dost ek cup me chay piyenge" etc., are popular.[15][16] It went on to be an inspiration for the plot element of the Tamil film Ullathai Allitha, the Telugu film Veedevadandi Babu and the Kannada film Galate Aliyandru. It was also reported that the climax of 1973 film Victoria No. 203, including the set and the action, was shot-to-shot copied in this film.[17]

While reviewing Grand Masti in 2013, critic Khalid Mohamed described Andaz Apna Apna in the "collection of excellent comedies" from Hindi cinema.[18] Film critic Raja Sen called it a "cornball classic" and "one of the greatest comedies in recent times."[19] In 2014, comedian Aditi Mittal wrote: "Writing about Andaz Apna Apna, I have realised, is like writing about mother’s love. Everyone has their own version of how it affects them, what lines they remember the most."[20] The film was featured in Filmfare's 100 Days series.[21] It is available on the streaming platform Netflix and Prime Video.[22][23]

The plot elements of the film were used in many languages as Ullathai Allitha (1996), Veedevadandi Babu (1997) and Galate Aliyandru (2000). Andaz Naya Naya is a Bollywood animated 3D film, which is an official remake of Andaz Apna Apna, but it has been shelved due to unknown reasons.[24] Producer Sidharth Jain began to question if the film would do any good at the box office because Indian animated films do not get good market, so Jain shelved the film after being 35% done.[25]

• Andaz Apna Apna at IMDb
• Andaz Apna Apna at Rotten Tomatoes