POLL 6: WHY HASN’T AN SRK-AAMIR-SALMAN-STARRER BEEN MADE YET?

Dear Readers,

Director Rakesh Roshan’s Shah Rukh Khan-Salman Khan-starrer Karan Arjun was one of 1995’s biggest box-office successes. Rajkumar Santoshi’s Andaz Apna Apna with Aamir Khan and Salman the previous year did not make similar money, it earned just a moderate amount, but over the years it has achieved cult status among comedy buffs. Considering that the Khan pairings of the past have each made their mark in different ways, it’s only natural to wonder why no one has yet cast (or managed to cast) Aamir and Shah Rukh together in a film or, better still, got all three of them in a single movie.

In 2014, Salman Khan completes 25 years as a leading man in the Hindi film industry – he started this journey with Maine Pyar Kiya in 1989, following an inconsequential supporting role in Biwi Ho To Aisi. Aamir Khan made his debut as a Bollywood hero in 1988 while Shah Rukh was winning hearts with his small-screen debut Fauji in the same year.

It was in this context that I asked you this poll question in the last week of December 2013:

WHY DO YOU THINK A BOLLYWOOD FILM STARRING SHAH RUKH KHAN, AAMIR KHAN AND SALMAN KHAN TOGETHER AS THE LEADS HAS NOT YET BEEN MADE?

Here’s how you voted:

3.7% of you voted for this reason: Because no Bollywood producer can afford their salaries for a single film

6.1% of you picked: Because even if a Bollywood producer could afford to pay all three Khans their usual salaries, it would be an unviable project, too expensive to recover its cost

2.5% chose: The three Khans don’t want to work together because of professional rivalries

4.9% believe: The three Khans don't want to work together because of personal animosity

26.8% (that’s a majority of you) voted for this reason why you believe an SRK-Aamir-Salman-starrer has not yet been made: No one has as yet written a script that’s worthy of such a casting coup

12.2% selected a reason that I thought would get very few votes (it turns out I have a much higher opinion of the Hindi film industry than you do): Bollywood is incapable of ever writing a script that’s worthy of such a casting coup

1.2% of you voted for a reason I assumed would get 0 votes: The stars’ fans wouldn’t want them to work together

2.5% of this blog’s readers think: Nobody is interested in seeing such a film

18.3% of the votes, that’s the second highest number, went to: The combined effect of their salaries, egos and insecurities would be impossible for any producer or director to handle

0% votes went in favour of: The stars don’t have dates

0% again chose: It’s too risky. What if such a film is started today and they are no longer as major stars by the time it’s completed?

2.5% felt: Bollywood does not have a director who would not be intimidated by their combined presence

18.3% said (and this makes it a tie for the second spot): All the above

1% cast their vote in favour of: None of the above

MY TAKE:

First, I learnt an important lesson in this poll: formulating questions in a poll is not easy. I often get irritated with TV channels and newspapers for asking questions that I’ve felt were designed to manipulate my response to them, yet here I forgot to add a crucial option that I myself would have liked to exercise as a voter: some of the above. I know this not just because some of you told me so, but because I too can’t pick any one of the above options. My answer is a combination of “some of the above”.

Without that option, my vote would have echoed the majority view here: No one has as yet written a script that’s worthy of such a casting coup

I believe a Bollywood film starring Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Salman Khan together as the leads has not yet been made because Bollywood has for years lacked the imagination to write a script that would merit such a casting coup. My reasoning goes beyond that though. Certainly there has been more experimentation in the past five years than there was in the formula-ridden 1970s-90s, but unfortunately, the three Khans have grown in stature and box-office clout as the industry’s risk-taking abilities increased. This means the Khans are getting more expensive to hire with every passing year. This means that a script accommodating each of their strengths would require even more imagination now. No doubt Bollywood has talents out there that are capable of writing such a script, but unless such a writer has the support of an adventurous, risk-taking, moneyed producer with the power to persuade the three Khans to look past their personal equations, that script will remain on paper or won’t be written at all. And until Step 1 has been taken, until such a script has been written with the support of such a producer, where is the question of approaching the Khans and figuring out whether they’ll say yes or no?

This is not to say that convincing them will be easy. After all their unprecedented longevity has been at least partly built on a rivalry that has often been bitter. Getting past that would be tough. The challenge would be compounded by the fact that a successful joint project has the potential to benefit their careers jointly, not singly. Why would anyone work so hard to help an arch rival rise in stature? Alternatively, there would be the fear that one of the three would emerge from the project looking better (more talented, more charming, more good-looking) than the others. None of these hurdles would be insurmountable though if that first step was taken.

After all, if Garry Marshall could assemble Julia Roberts, Ashton Kutcher, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Garner, Jamie Foxx, Bradley Cooper, Patrick Dempsey, Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Eric Dane, Hector Elizondo, Queen Latifah, Kathy Bates, George Lopez and Shirley MacLaine with a clutch of young stars including Taylor Swift in Valentine’s Day in 2010; if Steven Soderbergh could manage to get Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne and Jude Law together for Contagion in 2011; then a lot is possible.

In the past, when asked if he could manage the ultimate casting coup for Bollywood, producer-director Karan Johar has laughed off the possibility, once telling a journalist that if he were to make such a film he would end up in hospital. Frankly, despite what he says, if any director could manage such a casting coup, it’s KJo. What he needs first though is the appropriate script backed by one of Bollywood’s big studios (his Dharma Productions is unlikely to be able to financially afford such a film). If ever those two elements – a great script and a rich studio – fall into place, allow me to be an optimist: I do believe the three Khans could be persuaded to star as joint leads in a film.

That’s it on this subject. A new poll is up on the right-hand-side panel of this blog: please vote for your choice of Bollywood’s Best Actor in 2013.

Warm regards and a Happy New Year to all my readers,

Anna

Photographs courtesy: (a) Chennai Express: Disney UTV (b) Dhoom 3: Yash Raj Films (c) Dabangg 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabangg_2

  

POLL 2: ANDAZ APNA APNA VS AJAB PREM KI GHAZAB KAHANI VS PHATA POSTER NIKHLA HERO

Dear Readers,

It’s time to announce the results of the second poll on my blog. This one was pegged on the release of Rajkumar Santoshi’s Phata Poster Nikhla Hero starring Shahid Kapoor and Ileana D’Cruz. 

The question I asked was:

WHICH OF THESE COMEDIES BY DIRECTOR RAJKUMAR SANTOSHI DO YOU LIKE THE MOST?

Here’s how you voted:

76% of you voted for Andaz Apna Apna as the best of the three films listed. AAA, for those of you who are too young to recall, was released in 1994 and starred Aamir Khan, Karisma Kapoor, Salman Khan and Raveena Tandon.

15.5% voted for Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani, the Katrina Kaif-Ranbir Kapoor-starrer. 

8.5% of you voted for Phata Poster Nikhla Hero.

Some of you pointed out last time that my poll-related posts will be incomplete unless I tell you how I myself would have voted in the poll. Fair enough. Here’s your answer:

My first choice: Andaz Apna Apna – I find myself laughing even now when I catch snatches of that film. I also can’t help but wonder if any Hindi film director will ever again manage to get Salman-Aamir or for that matter any of the two Khans together in one film.

My second choice: Phata Poster Nikhla Hero – Yeah yeah, I know some of you want to shoot me for this, but what can I say? I enjoyed PPNH. It slowed down in the second half but for the most part I found it funny, I thought Shahid was a delight, his versatility was enjoyable plus it was clean.

My third choice: Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani – I’m not in love with this film. From the collections of APKGK and PPNH, it’s clear that a much larger section of the audience embraced the former. Well, I must beg to disagree. This film was nice in places, the songs were lovely, I did enjoy it’s deliberately stage-sets-like look and of course as always Katrina Kaif & Ranbir Kapoor were easy on the eye, but it didn’t keep me engaged throughout.

So it turns out that with PPNH and APKGK I differ from voters on this blog, but I’m totally with the majority view about AAA.

Incidentally, this blog post made me ask myself: what’s my all-time favourite No. 1 Hindi film comedy? Such questions are always hard to answer because “all-time” is such a long time, but I do know that the first film coming to mind the moment I hear the question is Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. Every single time I watch excerpts of the film I die laughing and then have to be born again. Oh for a film maker who could give us such quality once again! Sigh!

Signing off now. The next poll is already up - check the right-hand-side panel on this blog. Do vote. But first, here's a tip: like I always tell my students, READ THE QUESTION CAREFULLY! :)

Warm regards,

Anna

Photographs courtesy: (a) The Wikipedia pages of Andaz Apna Apna and Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani (b) Phata Poster Nikhla Hero courtesy bollywoodtrade.com

REVIEW 224: PHATA POSTER NIKHLA HERO

Release date:	September 20, 2013
Director:	Rajkumar Santoshi
Cast: Language:	Shahid Kapoor, Ileana D’Cruz, Padmini Kolhapure, Zakir Hussain, Darshan Zariwala, Saurabh Shukla, Sanjay Mishra, Mukesh Tiwari Hindi

No one farts in this film. There’s not a single joke about faeces or other bodily excretions or secretions. The volume remains relatively low. The characters are not all wearing red pants, purple shirts, green shoes, mustard-framed goggles and pink scarves with yellow polka dots or similar colour combinations. Nor do they rhyme their sentences. But whaddyaknow, Phata Poster Nikhla Hero is still good for a bunch of laughs. Writer-director Rajkumar Santoshi’s latest comedy is not consistently crackling like his 1994 Aamir Khan-Salman Khan-Karisma Kapoor-Raveena Tandon-starrer Andaz Apna Apna. It also holds out a rather muddled message in the end: should children not follow their dreams but do their parents bidding instead?! Yet, in this era of ‘humour’ dominated by loud crudeness, it’s still a breath of fresh air.

PPNH is the story of Vishwas Rao (Shahid Kapoor) who pretends to be a policeman to please his mother Savitri Rao (Padmini Kolhapure), while surreptitiously working towards an acting career. Misunderstandings and melodrama ensue. Along the way they encounter a social worker who is so vigilant about crime that the police nickname her ‘Complaint’ Kajal (Ileana D’Cruz); a failed film writer (Sanjay Mishra); an honest senior cop, Shivanand Khare (Darshan Jariwala); the corrupt Inspector Ghorpade (Zakir Hussain); an evil don, Gundappa Das (Saurabh Shukla); and a faceless international gangster who goes by the name Napoleon.

Santoshi’s screenplay is clever for the most part, extracting laughs without under-estimating the viewer’s IQ. When the film’s pace occasionally dips – and this happens only in the second half – it’s more to do with the direction than the writing. The bow to Deewar’s iconic “mere paas Maa hai” dialogue, for instance, is unforgivably poorly paced. There are also a couple of low-energy scenes post interval, especially that one in which the good people have blinded the bad people in their den and must escape, but run around in confused circles instead.

Pritam’s best tunes for this film (Main rang sharbaton ka and Tu mere agal bagal hai) are well picturised but elsewhere there are too many abruptly inserted songs including the very ordinary Dhating naach featuring Nargis Fakhri in a guest appearance and Mere bina tu, the picturisation of which is too reminiscent of Tu jaane na from the director’s earlier film Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani. One song may seem mild in comparison with the onslaught of sexual harassment in Raanjhanaa, but in a country where so many crimes against women take place because patriarchy believes men can demand sex as a matter of right from women, we could do without these lyrics from Tu mere agal bagal hai: “Khali peeli khali peeli rokne ka nahin / tera peecchha karoon toh tokne ka nahin / Hai tujh pe right mera / tu hai delight mera…”  

These lines are particularly incongruous because of the dialogue preceding the song: when Vishwas Rao’s friend notices that the boy is smitten by Kajal, he warns him, “Yeh Mumbai ki ladki hai. Hehe karke baat karegi par line maarne jaaoge toh tumhare upar doggy chhod degi.” Meaning: Just because a girl is friendly does not mean she’s romantically interested in you. Now that’s a pleasant change from Hindi filmdom’s old message of: when a girl says no, she actually means maybe or yes. Equally important is the fact that the women in this film are not side shows or show pieces or pushovers. Kajal may seem ditsy but she has a mind of her own. And Maa is an autorickshaw driver, which is unusual enough as a choice of profession for Indian women but is particularly noteworthy in a film industry which prefers stay-at-home, full-time roti-serving, bartan-washing, bhagwan-se-bintee-karo-ing moms. Equally uncommon for a Bollywood mother is the way Savitri tells her irresponsible husband that his child cannot be deemed his child merely by virtue of the blood tie.

Some mixed messages there then, but let not this review leave you in any doubt: I had fun watching Phata Poster Nikhla Hero. Shahid is a chameleon in this film, switching from deliberately exaggerated humour to emotional intensity to a spot of mimickry at the drop of a hat. He even gets a scene in which the villains generously pull off his shirt, leaving him in a black vest that gives us a nice view of that trim torso and well-muscled arms. For the record, may I add that if he ever decides to leave Bollywood, I suspect he’d be a helluva pole dancer. In her second Bollywood film, Ileana reveals what Telugu audiences know well already: that she is a versatile actress. Is she the slightly melancholic Shruti of Barfi! or the slightly nutty Kajal of PPNH? Besides, she’s a delicate little beauty, in possession of possibly the largest eyes to haunt the Hindi film screen in decades. To borrow Laurent the Frenchman’s description of Sridevi’s saucer-like eyes in English Vinglish: “like two drops of coffee on a cloud of milk.” The rest of the excellent cast provide able support to these two.

The film’s production design is interesting, more often than not opting for a set-like, stagey look that brings back memories of Ajab Prem... There are, in fact, several nods here to Ajab Prem… and Andaz Apna Apna, the best of them coming in the form of a cleverly crafted guest appearance by Salman Khan who plays himself brilliantly in those couple of minutes. That scene alone is worth the price of a ticket. Despite its weaknesses, so is the rest of Phata Poster Nikhla Hero. It’s funny and goofy, sweet even when it's being silly, a good ol’ clean comedy from Bollywood after a long time.

Rating (out of five): ***

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	2 hours 32 minutes (courtesy pvrcinemas.com)

Photograph courtesy: bollywoodtrade.com