Chhoti Si Baat

Chhoti Si Baat is a 1976 Hindi romantic comedy film directed by Basu Chatterjee. The film’s title means “A Small Matter” in Hindi. Considered one of the best Hindi comedy films of the 1970s, it is a nostalgic favourite for its quirky take on pre-hypercongestion Bombay. The film became a box office hit. and also earned Filmfare nominations and a Filmfare Award for Best Screenplay for Basu Chatterjee. The movie is loosely based on the 1960 British movie School for Scoundrels.It also established Amol Palekar as having an uncommon comic talent for playing mousy characters, a role he would go on to repeat several times in his career. As with other Basu Chatterjee films, moviestars have small cameos playing themselves: Dharmendra and Hema Malini (whose mother Jaya Chakravarthy helped produce the film) are in a movie-within-a-movie for the song Janneman Janneman, while Amitabh Bachchan plays himself in another scene, where he seeks advice from Ashok Kumar’s character. He is dressed in costume from Zameer, whose film poster is prominently displayed at the bus stop scenes in Chhoti Si Baat. B.R. Chopra is the producer for Zameer, just as he is for Chhoti Si Baat.