Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (translation: Munna Bro M.B.B.S.) is a 2003 Indian Hindi-language comedy drama film written and directed by Rajkumar Hirani (in his directorial debut) and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra. The film was the first installment of  Munna Bhai film series before its sequel Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006). Released in India on 19 December 2003, the film features Sunil Dutt in his final film role as the father to his real-life son, Sanjay Dutt, who stars as the titular character of Munna Bhai. The cast also includes Gracy Singh, Jimmy Sheirgill, Arshad Warsi, Rohini Hattangadi, and Boman Irani. It is broadly based on the 1998 Hollywood movie Patch Adams (film).

Based in Mumbai, the films follows Munna Bhai (Sanjay Dutt), a goon who tries to please his father (Sunil Dutt) by pretending to be a physician. When a doctor, Asthana (Irani), exposes Munna's lies and tarnishes his father's honour, Munna enrols in a medical college. Hijinks ensue when Munna, upon finding that Asthana is the college's dean, vows revenge, while also sparking a romance with a house doctor, Suman (Singh), unaware that she is Asthana's daughter.

Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. was a major critical and commercial success, and was later followed by a second film Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006), thus becoming the first installment of the Munna Bhai film series. The film went on to win the 2004 National Film Award for Best Popular Film, and several Filmfare awards, including the Best Film (Critics) and Best Screenplay. At the box office, it achieved a silver jubilee status (25-week run) being one of only eight Hindi films to have achieved this status since the year 2000. In its 26th week of release, the film could still be found playing on 300 screens throughout India.

Hirani revealed in an interview in September 2019 that production on the third Munna Bhai film starring Dutt in the title role will begin in towards the end of 2020.

Plot 
Murli Prasad Sharma, nicknamed "Munna Bhai", is a street-wise, Bombay Hindi-speaking gangster in the streets of Mumbai, who is always supported by his loyal sidekick, Sarkeshwar, nicknamed "Circuit". Once a year, Munna and Circuit's gang converts his hide-out into a fully-functioning hospital, to fool Munna's visiting parents Hari and Parvati, who believe that Munna has become a real physician. Munna and Circuit's goons take turns playing doctors, staff and patients, to keep up the charade.

This works for many years, until one of Hari's annual visits with Parvati culminates in Hari bumping into Dr. Jagdish Chandra Asthana, who founded the first hospital in Munna's village years ago. Hari proposes to Asthana that they get Asthana's daughter "Chinki" and Munna married, recalling that the two were childhood friends in their village. Asthana agrees, even though Munna contacts "Chinki" and asks her to reject him, lest his parents discover the truth. However, it is when his maid reacts shockingly to Munna's photograph that Asthana realizes the truth, and exposes Munna's real occupation to Hari and Parvati. Humiliated and embarrassed at their son's lack of a real vocation, Hari and Parvati leave the city and return home to their village.

Munna, in grief and despair, decides that the only way to redeem himself and take revenge against the spiteful Asthana is to become a physician in reality. With the help of Circuit and others, Munna "gains admission" to a medical college in order to obtain a MBBS degree by using Dr. Rustom Pavri, a faculty member of "Imperial Institute of Medical Studies" as a prop to write the pre-medical examinations. He again encounters Asthana in the same college, who happens to be the dean. His success there becomes dependent upon the (coerced) help of Rustom, which includes situations such as cheating in the sessionals.

Although he has no medical skills, Munna transforms those around him with the "Jadoo Ki Jhappi" ("Magical Hug")  – a method of comfort taught to Munna by his mother – and the compassion he shows towards those in need. Despite the school's emphasis on mechanical, cartesian, impersonal and often bureaucratic relationships between doctors and patients, Munna constantly seeks to impose a more empathetic and almost holistic regimen around himself. He enforces the regime of "common-sense treatment" and uses old-fashioned kindness and love to "cure" many patients at the hospital, including Karan, a suicidal youngster he met on his first day of college. Attempting to treat a brain-dead patient, Anand Banerjee in his own empathetic and compassionate style, he defies all convention by interacting on familiar but autocratic terms with patients, humiliating school bullies, effusively thanking a hitherto underappreciated janitor, and encouraging the patients themselves to make changes in their lives, so that they do not need drugs or surgery.

Asthana, who perceives all this as symptoms of chaos, is unable to prevent it from expanding and gaining ground at his college. He begins laughing in a way that implies that he has gone insanely mad, as an attempt to practice "laughter therapy", which serves more to convey his anger than diffuse it. In the meantime, the carefree Munna also develops a friendly relationship with Dr. Suman, another faculty member at the hospital, who turns out to be Asthana's daughter. Unaware that Suman and his childhood friend "Chinki" are one and the same, an ignorance that Suman hilariously exploits to a point where he is bluffed into believing "Chinki" is not his type anymore, Munna decides to confess his feelings for Suman and abandon his personal vendetta against "Chinki" and Asthana.

Meanwhile, Munna proceeds to arrange Circuit to bring a stripper inside the patient ward in an attempt to cheer up Zaheer Ali, a man dying from stomach cancer, whom Munna befriends in the process. At the same time, Munna cures Rustom's dying father by his own methods as well, which earns him Rustom's respect and leads Zaheer to consider Munna an almost "divine" man. Asthana tries several times to expel Munna but is often thwarted by Munna's wit or the affection with which the others at the college, including, to some extent, Suman herself, regard Munna, having gained superior self-esteem by his methods.

When Asthana learns about the stripper episode, he sees this as a potential reason to expel Munna on disciplinary grounds, but is unable to do so after Munna deliberately injures himself gravely in order to stay back. However, when he does recover, the hospital staff, patients and students stand in Asthana's way and refuse to let Munna leave. Thus, Asthana challenges Munna to take a test in front of him and the entire college the next day to keep his enrolment. Everyone accepts the challenge. Later that night, during the preparation, Zaheer collapses to a worsening health and calls for Munna, asking him to save his life, but unfortunately, he dies in Munna's arms.

The next morning, Munna begins answering the questions well, but Asthana intervenes and announces he will ask all the forthcoming questions, shocking everyone. Munna is eventually unable to answer and is ashamed of himself into leaving the college. He confesses the truth to everyone and breaks down about his guilt to Zaheer, his parents, and everyone he cared for. Everyone except Asthana is moved to tears by his speech. In the moments immediately following Munna's departure, Anand miraculously awakens from his vegetative state. Suman, at this point, realizes Munna as the miracle behind Anand's recovery and gives a heartfelt speech, criticising her father for having banished Munna, pointing out that doing so is as good as banishing hope, compassion, love, and happiness from the college. Asthana eventually realises his folly.

Although Munna ends up unsuccessful in becoming a physician, the news of his "miraculous" treatments reaches Hari and Parvati and they return from their village. Later that night, Munna reconciles with Hari and Parvati and is asked by them to meet "Chinki". When he goes to meet "Chinki" atop the terrace, Munna is amused to find out that "Chinki" is in fact Suman herself. Following their marriage, Munna and Suman open a hospital in Munna's home village, where they implement Munna's ideas daily, while Asthana is revealed to have picked up Munna's lingo there as the head doctor, while also implementing the fun-oriented methods used by Munna earlier.

The medical college – under Rustom's management since Asthana's retirement – also begins to imitate Munna's radical methods of treatment. Thus, in addition to the birth of their offsprings, earns Munna the nickname "Munna Bhai – M.B.B.S. – Miya Biwi Bachhon Samet" (literally "Husband Wife With Children"), even though he does not become a physician in real. His sidekick Circuit also gets married a year later and has a son, who is nicknamed "Short Circuit". As the film concludes, Anand, restored to normal mental health, narrates the story to a few children at the hospital as he is about to leave for Kolkata.

Cast 
The cast is listed below (according to the opening credits):-
 Sunil Dutt as Shri Hari Prasad Sharma; Munna's father
 Sanjay Dutt as Murli Prasad Sharma a.k.a. Munna Bhai; a gangster and medical student in Mumbai
 Gracy Singh as Dr. Suman Asthana a.k.a. Chinki, Asthana's daughter and a doctor who works alongside her father in the same hospital
 Jimmy Shergill as Zaheer Ali; Suman's terminally ill hospital patient and Munna's friend
 Arshad Warsi as Sarkeshwar Sharma a.k.a. Circuit; Munna's sidekick
 Rohini Hattangadi as Parvati Sharma; Munna's mother
 Boman Irani as Dr. Jagdish Chandra Asthana; Suman's father and the college dean
 Kurush Deboo as Dr. Rustom Pavri; a faculty member of the medical college 
 Yatin Karyekar as Anand Banerjee; a brain-dead hospital patient
 Nawazuddin Siddiqui as a pickpocket who tried to steal Hari's wallet at the railway station (special appearance)
 Rohitash Gaud as the Tender coconut seller in the park
 Neha Dubey as Shalini; Suman's friend and fake Chinki
 Mumaith Khan as Nandini a.k.a. Reena, the dancer in the song "Dekh Le" (special appearance)
 Priya Bapat as Meenal; 1st Year medical student
 Pushkar Shrotri as a Professor in the college
 Sundeep Suthar as Chaiwallah
 Vishal Thakkar as Karan; the suicidal patient
 Anuradha Chandan as Vidya; Karan's mother
 Khurshed Lawyer as Nagrajan Swami; Munna's roommate and friend
 Bomie E. Dotiwala as Papa; Rustom's carrom-obsessed father

Production 
In an interview, Hirani discussed how the idea for the film emerged from his interaction with some friends who were medical students. Later, he also had the opportunity to interact with a lot of medical professionals when some members of his family became sick. These experiences gave birth to the idea for the film.

During the scripting stage, Hirani wanted Anil Kapoor to play the lead role. However, Shah Rukh Khan was later cast as Munna along with Sanjay Dutt as Zaheer but due to his back problems Khan was forced to turn down the film. Nevertheless, the end credits of the film thank Khan for his inputs into the script. Hirani also narrated the script to Aishwarya Rai during the time he was in talks with Shahrukh Khan. Khan and Rai were working together on Devdas at the time. Vivek Oberoi was considered for the role, but in the end Sanjay Dutt took the role as Munna, which ultimately gave him an image make over and helped change the public perception of the controversial superstar; his real-life father Sunil Dutt returned to the silver screen after 10 years to play Munna's father. This is the first and only film in which real-life father and son Sunil and Sanjay appear together, although they both appeared in Reshma Aur Shera (1971), Rocky (1981) and Kshatriya (1993) but not in any scenes together.

The original choice for Circuit's role was Makarand Deshpande. Arshad Warsi took over the role which proved to be a turning point for his career. The scenes of the Medical College were shot at the Agriculture College of Pune and Grant Medical College Mumbai.

The film has a similar premise to the 1998 American film Patch Adams, starring Robin Williams. The producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra, however, denies there being a resemblance, and says that he had not watched the film before the release of Munna Bhai.

Hirani did not have a big budget to shoot the film. As a result, he had to change the way certain scenes were shot. For example, the film ends with stills of Munna Bhai's wedding. Hirani was told that setting up a wedding stage and making a wedding outfit for Gracie Singh would cost him several thousand rupees. To save on some of that money, Hirani arranged to have the stills shot on an actual wedding stage set up for a real wedding near the sets. The production team reached an agreement with the wedding hall management and used their stage after a wedding ended.

Music 

The music is composed by Anu Malik. Lyrics for the songs are penned by Abbas Tyrewala and Rahat Indori. According to the Indian trade website Box Office India, with around  units sold, this film's soundtrack album was the year's one of the highest-selling.

Accolades 
Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. was the recipient of a number of awards. At the 50th Filmfare Awards, it received the Best Film (Critics), Best Screenplay, the Best Dialogue, and Best Comedian (for Warsi) in addition to four other nominations. It won a number of awards at the 2004 Zee Cine Awards including Best Debuting Director, Best Actor in a Comic Role (for Warsi), Best Cinematography, and Best Dialogue.

Other ceremonies include the 2004 National Film Awards where it won the National Film Award for Best Popular Film and the 2004 International Indian Film Academy Awards where it won the IIFA Best Comedian Award.

Sequel 

In February 2004, after the success of Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., Rajkumar Hirani decided to work on his next project. He, along with his co-writer Abhijat Joshi, started to write the script of their new film. They didn't wanted that script to include Munnabhai but after they wrote it, the script eventually turned out to be of Lage Raho Munna Bhai. Sanjay Dutt, Sunil Dutt, Arshad Warsi and Boman Irani were to reprise their roles but after the death of Sunil in May 2005, Hirani decided that the film will only have Sanjay & Warsi to reprise their characters from Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. and other actors like Boman Irani and Jimmy Shergill were cast in new roles. Lage Raho Munna Bhai was released on 1 September 2006 and turned out to be a huge success.
Munna Bhai part 3 is still in making.

Remakes 
The film was remade in Tamil as Vasool Raja MBBS (2004), in Telugu as Shankar Dada M.B.B.S. (2004), in Kannada as  Uppi Dada M.B.B.S. (2007) and in Sinhala as Dr. Nawariyan (2017).

References

External links 
Official Website
 
 
 
Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. at Rediff.com

2003 films
Films set in Mumbai
2000s crime comedy-drama films
Indian crime comedy-drama films
Hindi films remade in other languages
2000s Hindi-language films
Medical-themed films
Films scored by Anu Malik
Indian gangster films
Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment National Film Award winners
Films directed by Rajkumar Hirani
2003 directorial debut films
2003 comedy films
2003 drama films