Eid Bollywood Charades Movies: 12 Films to Act Out
Eid charades stalls at the same point every year. The room is full, everybody has eaten too much, and the person holding the list is the one person who cannot play. What the evening needs is titles nobody had to sit down and write.
The twelve films below all suit a room in that state, and none of them needs anybody to remember a plot. If you would rather not read a list at all, the generator deals titles one at a time and skips this step entirely.
What makes a film work for Eid charades?
A film works for Eid charades when the whole room recognizes the title, not just the people who follow cinema closely.
An Eid gathering is the widest age range a room gets all year. Grandparents, cousins home for the weekend, children who will be asleep by ten. A title that only one generation knows kills the round before anybody has stood up.
The second thing that matters is whether the title can be broken into pieces. A name splits into parts a person can mime. An abstract noun does not.
Twelve Eid Bollywood charades movies
These run roughly from the ones a full room will get quickly to the ones worth saving for later in the evening.
1. Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015)
A man walks a lost child home across a border. It opens a round well because almost everybody has seen it, and the mime for the first word is a gift.
2. My Name Is Khan (2010)
A man travels across a country to deliver one sentence to a president. The title is a sentence itself, which is unusual and makes it easier than it looks.
3. Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001)
A family splits over a marriage and spends three hours finding its way back together. Four words, two of them opposites, and a room that will start shouting halfway through the second.
4. Veer-Zaara (2004)
A love story held apart by a border and forty years of waiting. Two names and nothing else, so the person acting has to work with faces rather than objects.
5. Chak De! India (2007)
A disgraced coach takes a women's hockey team to a world title. The second word is the easiest thing on this list to mime and the first word is not.
6. 3 Idiots (2009)
Three friends survive an engineering college. The number is free and the noun is a gift to anybody willing to be unflattering about the room.
7. Sultan (2016)
A wrestler goes back into the ring long after he should have stopped. One word, and the mime is the same four seconds repeated until somebody says it.
8. Gully Boy (2019)
A young man raps his way out of a chawl. Two words and both are hard to mime directly, so this one usually gets solved on the second syllable rather than the first.
9. Jodhaa Akbar (2008)
An emperor marries a princess and then spends the film earning it. Two names again, which is why it sits this far down.
10. Fanaa (2006)
A tour guide turns out to be somebody else entirely. One word, no object, no action, and nothing in it a person can hold up.
11. Raazi (2018)
A woman marries into a family she has been sent to spy on. A single word that means agreed, which is an idea rather than a thing, and ideas are what stall a turn.
12. Mughal-e-Azam (1960)
A prince defies an emperor over a court dancer. Save this one for late. Everybody in the room knows it and almost nobody can get it out of one person in sixty seconds.
How do you run the game so nobody sits out?
Set the turn length out loud before the first person stands up, then leave it alone.
Sixty seconds is the number that works. Ninety turns a stalled turn into a long silence that the room has to watch.
Two rules are worth agreeing in advance. No sounds and no pointing at things in the room, which is the one everybody breaks. And one pass per team per round, so a turn that is clearly dead can end without an argument about whether the clue was fair.
Mix the teams rather than letting them form themselves. Left alone, the people who watch everything end up on one side and the game is over by the third turn.
Eid Bollywood charades movies: questions people ask
What are the best Eid Bollywood charades movies?
The ones a full room recognizes, which at an Eid gathering means titles that have been around long enough for two generations to have seen them. Bajrangi Bhaijaan, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham and Veer-Zaara all clear that bar. Open with those, and keep the single-word titles like Fanaa and Raazi for later, once the room has stopped being polite.
How do you pick films when the room spans four generations?
Take titles from three decades rather than three years. A list drawn from the last two seasons of releases will lose every player over forty, and a list of only classics loses everybody under twenty. Mixing the eras also means each team holds somebody who knows the answer, which is what stops one side running away with it.
How long should a round of Dumb Charades (damsharas) last?
Three to five rounds, which gives everybody on each team one turn acting. After that a room starts drifting whatever the score is. If you want an end point, play to a number rather than a clock, then stop when the food comes out. That is usually the real end of the game anyway.
What happens when nobody can guess the title?
The turn ends, the point goes to the other team, and the person acting says the title out loud. Saying it matters more than the point. Half the value of a dead turn is the room finding out what the mime was supposed to be, which is reliably funnier than a turn that worked.
Can you play this without a list at all?
Yes, and it is the better way to play, because a written list has to be kept secret from the people who wrote it. A title generator deals a film to one person at a time, which means whoever was organizing the evening gets to play it as well.
Start the first round
Split into two teams, agree the turn length, and let somebody who has already eaten go first. The films can come off a screen rather than off a list somebody has to guard all night.
You might also like
