Colossal Duds after hyping them is a long known Bollywood tradition !

So am sure the Aamir or Amitabh fan in you might have come out of the shock of the fact Thugs Of Hindostan, the most anticipated movie of the year has turned out to be a dud. Fact of the matter remains that delivering duds after huge hype is a long maintained tradition at Bollywood you might remember some, you might forget some. However here are some of those movies which had a lot riding on them and they came a cropper on the box office. No they were not ahead of their times movies which later grew to become cult. They were and are plain pure duds. Here are some of those moments of Bollywood history when all had seem lost for those involved.

Roop Ki Rani Choron Ka Raja – This one was forever in the making. Announced right after the super hit almost decade defining Mr.India in 1987, Roop Ki Rani Choron Ka Raja was released after one hyped up story in the media after the other. In fact to use a famous line of today the nation wanted to see the movie as soon as yesterday. There were signs that not all was well Shekhar Kapoor the original director left mid way leaving it in the hands of his assistant Satish Kaushik. There was a mad amount spent on great sets ,costumes and cinematography. The music was the first signal the songs when released did not create any fire. The movie was extremely crucial for Sridevi whose crown was almost lost to Madhuri the new challenger on the block. This movie was a headache inducer with even Anupam Kher the villain hamming away to glory. Jackie Shroff was the only dignified thing in this one. Made at a the then King’s treasure budget of Rs.10 crores this one left many crying. As a college friend popularly branded it for me this one was – “Rupaye ki Rani Charane ka Raja !”

Trimurti – This one had created huge controversy. Sanjay Dutt’s connect with the terror world forced the then numero uno maker Subhash Ghai to replace Dutt with Anil Kapoor, an error for which Dutt never forgave Ghai till he worked in Ek aur Ek Gyarah. Trimurti had probably the biggest frenzy for it. It was the coming together of Subhash Ghai with Mukul S Anand the tech whiz kid of 1990s, the man who brought Hollywood feel to Indian Cinema. This movie was also coming together of SRK the then challenger to the established Kings of Bollywood. Trimurti turned out to be a jigsaw of well shot scenes and Anil Kapoor’s Sikander was the only good thing about it. The movie is also remembered for reducing the theater icon Mohan Agashe to a peacock meets and orangutan called Kooka.

Mela – The only good thing this one did is that Akshay Kumar got a wife for himself. As any trivia hungry bollywood buff would know is that Twinkle Khanna had told a pursuing Akshay that is Mela does not work she will marry him. It bombed and how. This one was a remake of Karwan with shades of Sholay in it. Twinkle Khanna was the principle character in this one and her Roopa remains the benchmark of loud overacting for a female star in Bollywood till date. Even Rakhi’s mere Karan Arjun aayenge appears like a dignified Bachchan compared to this one. Add an action choreographer called Mahender Verma as the principle Villain and Aamir Khan in his most hyper avtar ever.  This one was a festival of overacting .

Main Prem Ki Deewani Hoon -  This one was the fourth attempt of Sooraj Barjatya. He was the man who could do nothing wrong, someone who had redefined a genre in Bollywood. Someone who brought families back to theaters. This one was his collaboration with Hrithik Roshan the new crush of every Bollywood watching female , a new comer who was then hailed as the first legit threat to SRK. The movie had an animated parrot, a high bp suffering heroine in Kareena and Hrithik’s first and only over acting role till date. This competition of hyper activity crashed and probably caused such a dent in Barjatya’s reputation that it took him a good three years to recover till another marriage video called Vivah saved him.

There is good news in the debacle of Thugs of Hindostan !

I belong to the tribe of those who had heavy expectations from Thugs of Hindostan. Like many I did not exactly celebrate the failure of this hugely anticipated movie. Yes I did laugh at the army of humour filled memes that came out once the below average content of this movie started hitting all of us. So many of us who are either Aamir or Amitabh or both fans would be feeling a bit low and some of us might be getting involved in the war of fans on social media.

However in every big positive news there is a element of caution and in every story of gloom there is hope hidden somewhere , same is the case with this debacle of Thugs Of Hindostan. The message to an arrogant bollywood is loud and clear. You can hog the screens. You can monopolise the choice offered to a viewer. You can ensure that your movie gets extended holiday weekend. The audience will now put its foot down and show you the door. Beyond the weekend and blind fans there is no hope for such low on content high on commotion cinema. Race3 was the first warning and Thugs of Hindustan is almost a final decision from the courts of the audience. The decision is give us cinema of content or we prefer to watch TV or cricket home, or we will still walk in to the cinema but go for the better content three or five week old movies. How many of you would have bet on the fact three weeks back that Badhaai Ho will end up earning more than Thugs Of Hindostan. You can hold on to your chairs while you read this but so far as Indian Box Office is concerned that is looking a clear possibility now.

This is good news any which way you look at it. For sure it will hurt the egos of big makers and hopefully in a positive way. Imagine a determined Aamir Khan willing to make up to the audiences with his next and what if he chooses to have Amitabh a part of that one too. Indian audiences are always willing to forgive and forget. Imagine a studio like Yashraj going back to the Yash Chopra days when content had some respect. This is also good news for the audiences who for once seems to have send in a united voice. This debacle will also force the ready to hype it up Mumbai club of reviewers that audiences will not buy into their hyped up content either. To be fair to the reviewer community they seem to have been reasonably honest with TOH.

This debacle coinciding with content based movies still running strong purely on word of mouth is also restoring faith that slowly after almost a decade of shoot and scoot cinema its usability as an effective tool seems to be coming to an end. It can be termed as poetic justice that a trend of huge screen holiday releases which started with the Aamir superhit Ghajini which also made audiences look at how many crores and not how much content is ending with an Aamir starrer. Given Race3 and now TOH makers will be brushing up screenplays, those who don’t are signing the death warrants of their films.

It is good news that so far as commercial viability is concerned suddenly a Tabbu is coming across as a better bet than hear my accent shake my rear Katrina. People are now preferring to fall in love with a great actress and not a hyped up item girl.

Therefore as an audience and as a fan of Amitabh and Aamir, in that order, I am happy Thugs of Hindostan bombed. In fact its working at the box office would have been the bad news. Directors will now give these two war horses better stories. Producers will look at the thrill count and not the screen count. You have to look at this movie failing and movies like Andhadhun and Badhaai Ho as the great churn that is happening in Bollywood today. Those who do not respect it will perish. In that sense failure of  Thugs Of Hindostan is the best gift the audiences could give themselves this Diwali.

Trailer review - Kedarnath

Review of Thugs of Hindostan

The war of trailers ! Bollywood’s laughable obsession?

In the last few days we have had a deluge of trailers from Bollywood. Some big movies like Thugs of Hindostan, Zero and Two Point Zero and then some smaller ones like a Mohalla Assi or Bhaiyaji Superhit. Obviously the smaller ones did not make a buzz though the loyal fans were always there to lap them up and you never really can predict if the trailer release guarantees box office success.

The obsession of Fans. Makers and the media is now reaching laughable heights. The moment a trailer is releases you have the whole hyper noise pollution on the internet which is about how many views a certain trailer has had and how those views are faster and more than a rival star’s movie. Common sense and logic are of course buried under the carpet of hype in any case. For Example both Zero and Thugs Of Hindostan have had almost 8 crore views on youtube. Now, if these are actual fans and unique people watching the movie’s trailer then at the cost of Rs.100 per ticket each of these movies should clock a revenue of 800 crores at box office. How many would be willing to bet on this number? Let us stretch the logic even further assuming the numbers of one of these movies do go across and bigger then the number we quote here then does that mean that there is a section which watched the movie without even looking at the trailer? If your answer is a yes to the question then such a hyped and intensely pushed trailer did not really reach all those who planned to watch the movie? Then does that qualify as a marketing failure?

There are more questions for the trailer hype brigade. What is the guarantee that I was not watching a trailer only to laugh at it? Or for all the technology sophistication how do you factor the same person watching the trailer from multiple sources like a personal computer, office computer or a mobile etc? Which means if we start cutting off such numbers then the actual audience numbers might not look so impressive.

The idea behind asking all such questions is neither to laugh at a superstar or a big director’s movie making capability. The idea is to simply point at the pitfalls of hype and the dangers of raised expectations. In the olden days while we would anticipate a big movie, like Subhash Ghai’s getting Raj Kumar and Dilip Kumar together in a Saudagar there was not much to read on a daily basis. When a maker tries to feed in too many stories about the making of a movie it really kills the joy. In fact it makes us obsessed with the unnecessary elements really.

For example how does it matter to the audiences that media which turned up to watch Zero trailer was fed with merrut ki authentic chaat or how does it matter if Akshay kumar sat for 4 hours daily with his make up or eight hours? Or for that matter how does it matter that the crew of Thugs Of Hindostan flew all the way to Malta for the ship sequences ? Yes we should respect the hard work that goes into making anything but then all the hard work is also done with the motive to make profits . More important remains the question that should a movie be judged on its ability to entertain,awe and inspire us or should we judge it on how many people saw its trailer in the first four hours of youtube release? When a star starts flaunting the trailer numbers on his twitter page is he actually being humble or is he just showing his big fat ego to us?

My favourite movie till I die will remain Sholay. For me it does not matter that the sound of Gabbar’s boots in that legendary introduction scene was dubbed in London in those days. For me the menace of kitne aadmi they is legendary and worship worthy.

Saw please don’t tell me how many kachchas SRK wore in your movie or how many trailer views twopointzero all languages combined has cracked,  give me entertainment please dear Bollywood and spare me your trailer hype and trailer war obsession.

2.0 Trailer - Video Review

trailer review - zero