By Ayesha Khan 
Mumbai, May 14: Nobody really thought Golmaal: Fun Unlimited was going to become what it became. It was just a comedy. Four guys, a blind couple, one very angry man named Vasooli Bhai, and a plot that made absolutely no sense if you thought about it too hard. But nobody was thinking too hard. They were too busy laughing.
That was 2006. Twenty years ago.
And on Wednesday, Rohit Shetty went on Instagram and reminded the entire country that some things just do not go away no matter how much time passes.
So What Did He Actually Post
Simple, really. A video. But the kind of video that hits you somewhere you were not expecting.
It starts with the old footage. The famous race car scene from the original film, Arshad Warsi and Sharman Joshi sitting in that car, waving at everyone like absolute madmen, completely unbothered by the fact that everything around them is chaos. If you have seen the film, you already smiled just reading that. And if you have not, just know that Sharman Joshi is dressed as a woman for this entire sequence, and somehow that is not even the funniest part.
Then the video cuts. And suddenly it is 2026. Same car. Same waving. Same two men. Just twenty years older and, if anything, even more comfortable being ridiculous together.
That is the whole video. That is all it needed to be.
Shetty wrote in the caption: “Driving down the memory lane! How old were you when you watched the first Golmaal? We promise you’ll relive those happy days very soon… filming in progress.”
Arshad Warsi shared it on his page too and wrote something that genuinely landed: “20 years and nothing has changed, Golmaal will keep entertaining you.” Coming from the man who played Madhav, that line hits a little different.
The Film That Nobody Saw Coming
Here is what people forget about Golmaal: Fun Unlimited now that it has become this beloved franchise with multiple sequels and massive box office numbers. When it released in 2006, nobody was expecting much.
It had Ajay Devgn, Arshad Warsi, Sharman Joshi, Tusshar Kapoor, Paresh Rawal, and a story involving four jobless young men who move into a house and start lying to their blind landlord and his wife about who they are. That is it. That is the setup. It sounds thin. It should not have worked as well as it did.
But something happened in that theatre. The comedy landed. The timing was sharp. The actors clearly enjoyed being around each other, and that enjoyment jumped right off the screen and into the audience. People went back for second viewings. Then they dragged their families. Then their colleagues. Word of mouth did things that no marketing budget could have managed.
A generation grew up with this film. It became the thing you quote at family dinners. The reference you drop with old friends and watch them grin immediately. That race car scene, specifically, became one of those cultural shorthand moments that needs no explanation among a certain age group of Indian moviegoers.
Now About Golmaal 5
The video is not just nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. Rohit Shetty is building towards something.
Golmaal 5 is currently being shot and the Ooty schedule is reportedly already underway. The production is being handled by Rohit Shetty Picturez along with T-Series, and while nobody is saying much about the actual story yet, the signals coming from the team are pretty clear: this one is going back to basics.
The biggest signal is Sharman Joshi. He was in the 2006 original, he played Laxman, and over the course of the later sequels his presence had reduced. Seeing him back, in that car, doing that wave, tells fans something about the direction Shetty wants to take this fifth chapter. Less expansion, more homecoming.
That said, Akshay Kumar is also joining the cast. Shetty has confirmed this himself. Now that is an interesting combination. Akshay is not exactly a low-key addition to any film, and fitting him into the very specific mad energy of a Golmaal film without disrupting what makes it work is genuinely going to be something to watch. Could go brilliantly. Could be the most entertaining experiment in the franchise. Either way, people will show up to find out.
The Comments Said Everything
When the video went up on Wednesday, the response was not just likes and fire emojis, though there were plenty of those too.
People started writing. Actual paragraphs. About where they were when they first saw the film. Summer holidays. Dad taking the whole family on a Sunday afternoon. Watching it on a pirated CD at a hostel room in college. Dragging a friend who did not want to come and then watching that friend laugh the hardest of everyone.
That is the thing about Golmaal. It is not just a film people remember. It is a film people remember watching with someone. And those someones, those moments, those specific summer afternoons from twenty years ago, that is what Rohit Shetty unlocked with one Instagram video on a Wednesday morning.
He did not need a press conference. He did not need a big announcement. He just put two men in a race car, showed you who they were twenty years ago and who they are today, and let people feel whatever they needed to feel.
Twenty Years Is A Long Time. But Not For This.
The Golmaal franchise has done well for itself since that first film. Golmaal Returns, Golmaal 3, Golmaal Again, each one brought the audience back and each one made good money. Golmaal Again in 2017 crossed Rs 200 crore domestically, which for a comedy ensemble was no small thing.
But ask someone to name their favourite and more often than not they go back to the first one. Not because the sequels were bad. Just because the first one had something unplanned about it. A looseness. An accidental quality that you cannot engineer once you know you are building a franchise.
Rohit Shetty knows this better than anyone. He was there. He made the thing. And everything about how he is approaching Golmaal 5, the Ooty shoot, Sharman Joshi back in frame, the decision to post that specific scene as the way to announce that filming is underway, suggests he is trying to find his way back to what made that first film feel the way it did.
Whether he gets there, well. That is what the movie is for.
For now it is just two guys in a race car waving at the world. Same as it ever was. And honestly? That is more than enough.
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- Ayesha Khan
- Ayesha Khan
- Ayesha Khan
- Ayesha Khan
Arun Upadhayay