It is not a surprise that everyone’s beloved movie Andaz Apna Apna, which celebrated its 30th birthday this week, had no takers when it released. With the exception of Hum Aapke Hain Koun!, 1994 mainly belonged to blood-thirsty action heroes seeking revenge.

Some of the top grossers of that year were Mohra, Krantiveer, Main Khiladi Tu Anari and Suhaag. Rajkumar Santoshi, the director of Andaz Apna Apna, was also coming off Ghayal and Damini, the origin story of Sunny Deol’s famous ‘dhai kilo ka haath’. In the midst of this festival of testosterone came Andaz Apna Apna which cast two superstars — Aamir Khan and Salman Khan — as foolish simpletons who remained foolish till the last frame.

There isn’t an angry bone in the film. This is a world where the hero can’t express his love to a woman because he has loose motions. The bad guy Teja’s grand evil plan is to steal his brother’s diamonds and buy a poultry farm so that he can breed chickens and eat omelettes.

Actor and casting director Abhishek Banerjee (Stree, Paatal Lok) says there is a “middle-class” quality to Andaz Apna Apna which makes it endearing and timeless.

“One of my favourite bits is when the villain asks Amar and Prem (names of Aamir and Salman’s characters, respectively) for a huge ransom and they arrive with a bag of coins because that’s all they have. I remember collecting coins was a rage at the time, and we all had piggy banks. It was so relatable,” says Banerjee.

Admirers of Andaz Apna Apna are often baffled by how Santoshi pulled off such silliness with conviction. How does one in all seriousness come up with lines like ‘Teja main hoon, mark idhar hai’, ‘Aap purush hi nahi, maha purush hai’ or ‘Yeh Vasco Da Gama ki gun hai. Kiske mama ki gun?’

And then there are the legendary stories of the film’s leading actresses Raveena Tandon and Karishma Kapoor being at loggerheads through the filming. At one point, they were tied together for a scene and forced to speak to each other.

Aamir Khan has also admitted that he hated working with Salman who he found to be “rude and inconsiderate”.

“I have also heard these stories. I don’t know how they managed those performances. In fact, I have taken Aamir’s style of repeating everything twice in the film like ‘maine bola tha, maine bola tha’ and used it in my performances,” says Banerjee.

Screenwriter Niren Bhatt (Stree 2, Bhediya) says it was only a few days ago when he met Paresh Rawal, who plays Teja, to discuss an upcoming project. But instead of doing the narration, he spent hours quizzing Rawal about the making of Andaz Apna Apna Hai.

Bhatt explains that the film takes some crazy creative swings that makes it one of a kind.

“All our iconic comedies like Half Ticket or Padosan have been about funny situations. Now suddenly comes a film that breaks all the rules and goes bonkers. It was totally out of the box. Santoshi himself was unable to recreate that madness in his later comedy films,” he says.

About a decade ago, filmmakers Hardik Mehta and Vivek Soni were commissioned by the erstwhile Phantom Films, owned by Anurag Kashyap, Vikas Bahl and Vikamaditya Motwane, to work on a sequel. Their film took off where the original ended, but with a new cast.

“We decided that this time instead of chasing money, Amar and Prem would chase social media fame. And Crime Master Gogo’s new goal was getting his own wax statue at Madame Tussauds. We had written the entire climax inside the museum,” says Mehta, adding that the dream was always going to be “a long shot”. Aamir Khan and Santoshi too have occasionally dropped hints about a sequel.

Bhavik Vora, founder of A47, an online store that sells pop culture merchandise, says he’s the ultimate Andaz Apna Apna super fan. He had watched the film twice on the same day with his friends at Mumbai’s single screen theatre Gaiety Galaxy.

“We have seen it so minutely that we know the little scenes and dialogues that others may have forgotten,” says Vora.

He pursued the producers Vinay Pictures, who own the rights of the film, for three years to let him create the official merchandise. It finally launched this week. He says it was a “pure passion project” to cater to the film’s dedicated online fan community that has kept it alive over three decades through dubsmashes, reels and memes.

Bhatt remembers a time when a director wasn’t understanding his pitch and he borrowed a tactic from the iconic scene where Aamir’s character explains a football match by moving around a bunch of glasses, and unknowingly foils a murder in the process.

“There were too many characters so I had to use that glass strategy. That’s how much the film is a part of our lives,” he laughs. “I would say the film is beyond cult. It’s a cultural phenomenon.”