10 Best Vidhu Vinod Chopra Movies and Where to Watch Them
Vidhu Vinod Chopra dominated the 2000s with production efforts like 3 Idiots, PK, and the Munnabhai movies. But he is a worthy director in his own right as you can take a look at the best Vidhu Vinod Chopra movies along with a handy guide to stream them all.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra, the Director
Finding early acclaim with his student films at FTII (Film and Television Institute of India), Vidhu Vinod Chopra earned the rare distinction of being an Oscar nominee from India when his 1978 documentary An Encounter with Faces was nominated for Best Documentary Short at the Academy Awards.
Most of Chopra’s films from the ‘80s and ‘90s harboured a particular focus on grand musical numbers and passionate melodrama. This is particularly true in the period epic 1942: A Love Story although his other hits also prove his affinity for playing around with multiple genres. So, if Parinda, Khamosh and Mission Kashmir were unpredictable thrillers, later works like Eklavya: The Royal Guard and Shikara were dramas rooted in more fact-based history.
Born and raised in Srinagar, Chopra has had an affinity for telling Kashmir-centric stories on celluloid. In this context, Mission Kashmir was a more commercial effort to shed light on the turbulence of the titular state. Hrithik Roshan and Sanjay Dutt’s morally grey protagonists represented different sides of the separatist struggle among Kashmiri populations.
A more sensitive and personalised approach was adopted years later with Shikhara, a romantic drama dwelling upon the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in the 1990s. While polarizing critics, Chopra was still praised for bringing to life a sensitive narrative largely influenced by Rahul Pandita’s poignant memoir Our Moon Has Blood Clots.
While Chopra unabashedly aims to appeal to mainstream audiences, the director isn’t afraid to experiment every once in a while. Khamoshi, for instance, was meta for its time featuring many actors playing sarcastic versions of themselves (a practice uncommon in Bollywood back then).
Then, after years of embarking on a directing sabbatical, Chopra made his Hollywood directorial debut with an English-language remake of his own 1989 crime drama Parinda. Broken Horses found Chopra directing Daredevil star Vincent D’Onofrio, the late Terminator Salvation actor Anton Yelchin, and several other Hollywood character actors.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra, the Producer
While this list covers Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s best movies as a director, his production credits are equally notable. Almost all of Rajkumar Hirani’s best movies were released under the Vinod Chopra films banner. Chopra and Hirani’s creative partnership started with the latter’s debut/breakout hit Munnabhai MBBS and its spiritual sequel Lage Raho Munnabhai.
Striving to helm many such heartwarming family dramas to watch, their partnership continued through the coming-of-age comedy 3 Idiots, the religious-themed satire PK, and the semi-biographical drama Sanju.
Why is 12th Fail Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s best movie to watch?
There are only a handful of Bollywood directors who can offer their magnum opus at a later stage of their career. Already considered as a commercial auteur for cult hits like 1942 and Parinda, Vidhu Vinod Chopra took a backseat from directing for most of the 2000s and 2010s. But in 2023, Chopra sought out to adapt the real-life rags-to-riches journey of a village dreamer who works his way up to becoming an Indian bureaucrat. With a perfectly cast Vikrant Massey in the lead, 12th Fail played out as an gut-wrenching but ultimately optimistic tale of hard work and commitment, with positive role models to look up to.
