Whatever might have worked against Andaz Apna Apna when it first came out in 1994 – the slapstick humour, the bewildering array of characters, the continuity breaks because of a prolonged three-year-long production schedule – are precisely the reasons the film has endured. Rajkumar Santoshi’s cheerfully anarchic Hindi movie has been re-released in cinemas, providing occasion for nostalgia as well as discovery.

In Andaz Apna Apna, the joke is on the grumpy and the literal-minded. The film takes itself seriously only insofar as it wants viewers to forget about their worries and split their sides over 154 minutes of unfettered silliness.

Santoshi wrote the screenplay and collaborated on the rat-a-tat dialogue with Dilip Shukla. Andaz Apna Apna stars Aamir Khan and Salman Khan during their ascent to the stratosphere alongside a minor army of actors adept at crackpottery.

The plot is out of a brightly coloured cartoon strip. Amar (Aamir Khan) and Prem (Salman Khan) are a pair of good-for-nothings with attitude to spare. Amar is supremely confident of his ability to get out of hot messes that are entirely the result of his doing. Prem too is the type to rush in where angels fear to tread.

Both men are fearlessly dim-witted, to the despair of their fathers. Both woo Raveena (Raveena Tandon),...