Salman Khan's Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan copies this iconic Vadivelu comedy and ruins it

The trailer for Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan , starring Salman Khan in the lead role, was released on Tuesday. While the filmmakers are upfront about that it's a remake of a Tamil hit Veeram , which had Ajith Kumar in the lead, they seem to have taken jokes from older Tamil movies without proper credits. 

In the trailer of Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan, Pooja Hegde's character bumps into Salman Khan's Bhai and drops a lovely antique vase. And she goes, "It was 400 years old." To that Bhai says, "Thank god, I thought it was new." 

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This joke is copied from the 2001 Tamil movie Friends. The jokes in this film have achieved the status of cult and comedy icon Vadivelu's performance in it continues to be a source of inspiration for meme creators. 

In Friends, Vadivelu's Nesamani is a contractor, who is tasked with repainting an old palace. And more than once, he ends up on the receiving end for the mistakes committed by his staff. In a scene, Nesamani asks Vijay's Aravindan, Suriya's Chandru and Ramesh Khanna's Krishnamoorthy to safely carry a tall pendulum clock to the other side of the house. Instead of focusing on the work, Aravindan's get lost looking at Devayani's Padmini, the darling of the royal family, and the clock drops on the floors and shatters into thousand pieces. And that sets the scene for Vadivelu to enter with a great sense of agitation and deliver a magnificent piece of physical comedy full of vigour and explosive energy. But, that's only the setup. The punchline comes when Radha Ravi's Ramanathan, the grumpy owner of the palace, tells Nesamani that the clock is the family's heirloom and it was about 200 years old. Without understating the value of the heirloom, a naive Nesamani heaves a sigh of relief and goes, "I was terrified thinking it was new." And that takes the whole joke that played out before to another level. The final punchline elevates the comedy. And clearly, director Farhad Samji, who has also written Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan, didn't count the importance of a dynamite performer like Vadivelu to make the joke work. The humour is not in the words, but in how they are said.  

Salman Khan's lacklustre performance in the comedy scene, which required an explosive energy akin to Vadivelu, comes across as a significant disappointment. 

To put it like Eminem, "You can try and read my lyrics off of this paper before I lay 'em But you won't take the sting out these words before I say 'em."

Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan is due in cinemas on April 21, coinciding with the Eid celebration.