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Munnabhai M.B.B.S in British Medical Journal
Call it peer recognition. Munnabhai MBBS, the underworld don with medical aspirations, has found rare respectability with the film being reviewed in the British Medical Journal , one of the most reputed medical journals in the world.
The journal posted the film's review on its website on Thursday. It occasionally carries reviews by doctors of Hollywood films such as the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind and the Robin Williams' starrer Patch Adams , the feel-good medico film on which Munnabhai MBBS is supposedly based.
The review calls the film "a riot" and notes that actor Sunjay Dutt, who plays Munnabhai, "won India's equivalent of the Best Actor Oscar" — a reference to the Filmfare award for Best Actor In A Comic Role that Dutt scooped up this year.
This is perhaps the first time that a Hindi film — and that too of the bole to genre of Bambaiyya — has made it to the venerable publication.
Incidentally, this is not Munnabhai's first overseas victory. Although trade pundits had predicted the film would only work in Mumbai, it has done well in non-Hindi speaking zones such as Tamil Nadu and the UK.
His fan following in neighbouring Pakistan was there for all too see when cricket-crazy crowds in Karachi displayed their affection for the reel-life doctor via Urdu posters with Vaat lag gayi hai scrawled on them each time Virender Sehwag deflected the ball to the boundary line.
When skipper Inzamam-ul Haq came on field to bat, loud shouts of 'Mamu' (the college dean in the film essayed by Boman Irani) filled the air, interspersed with the other nickname which Inzamam hates, 'Alu'.