Five is a pretty small number as far as this topic is concerned… The ever-changing and highly unpredictable tastes of the Indian audience comes to the fore from time to time when some absolutely brilliant movie comes a cropper at the box-office…
I will restrict myself to movies which released post 2000. Atleast that will make ‘5’ look bigger…
So here goes:
1. The Legend of Bhagat Singh
Director: Raj Kumar Santoshi
Cast: Ajay Devgan, Sushant Singh, Amrita Rao
Music: A R Rahman
Well, I frankly didn’t see anything wrong with the movie…An award winning performance by Ajay Devgan along with wonderful direction by Rajkumar Santoshi and some good music by A R Rahman could not save this movie…It brought out the incidents in Bhagat Singh’s life without trying to make him a supernatural hero...
Only reason might be that people preferred watching Bobby Deol’s Bhagat Singh and unfortunately missed out on a much much much better movie…
2. Dosti- FRIENDS FOREVER
Director: Suneel Darshan
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Bobby Deol, Kareena Kapoor, Lara Dutta
Music Directors: Nadeem-Shravan
This film got smashed by all the critics. Some very good acting by Akshay Kumar ably supported by Bobby made some of the critics say “Gays forever”!!!.
Wow. Great. Only one request: Criticize constructively…
Nadeem-Shravan’s wonderful tunes went unnoticed…Suneel did all the things right: handled the emotions magnificently, got the brilliant songs at the right places, extracted a lifetime performance from Akki only for critics to say, “Gays forever”!!!!
This film focused on friendship (which is being considered as extinct by some as they have said its an outdated story!!!) and the extent one goes in friendship.
Just one small consolation: This film is doing very well in the UK....But again, thats a small consolation.
3. Zubeidaa
Director: Shyam Benegal
Cast:Karisma Kapoor, Rekha, Manoj Bajpai
Music:A R Rahman
Another highly acclaimed movie didn’t find the audience. Karisma gave her best performance ever but the audiences were not ready (THEY STILL ARE NOT) to accept a woman-centric movie. Shyam Benegal took a high profile commercial actress and churned out a brilliant movie but……
It was based on a real life story about Khalid Mohammad’s (noted film critic) mother (if I am wrong, correct me)...
ARR gave some good tunes which were forgotten rather quickly….
4. Swades
Director: Ashutosh Govarikar
Cast: Shahrukh Khan, Gayatri Joshi
Music: A R Rahman
Well, I didn’t go to the theatre to see this movie… I thought it would be the typical excessive rhona-dhona movie of SRK. But when I saw it on cable, I was more than impressed with SRK who for once didn’t act like SRK. He was brilliant. So were some of the songs…
It brought out the essence of our Indian culture without getting too stereotypical...
It was surprising that inspite of delivering a huge hit in Lagaan, Ashutosh couldn’t ensure even a decent opening for Swades…The audiences just want to see SRK shred buckets of tears…That’s it…
5. Deewane Huey Paagal
Director: Vikram Bhatt
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Sunil Shetty, Shahid Kapoor, Paresh Rawal, Johny Lever, Rimi Sen
Music Director: Anu Malik
Vikram Bhatt came into form after a long time after some disasters like Elaan, Aetbaar and the like. A fun, mad film couldn’t even garner an initial. Akki was outstanding in this one. He made us roll over with laughter but the producers and distributors of this movie would disagree…
Allegations of it being a copy of Theres Something about Mary notwithstanding, this was a great entertainer...
As already said, 5 is a small number… Some other films that deserved to be hits are:
1. Shakti: The Power (Just because of the sheer intensity of Karisma’s acting)
Director: Krishna Vamsi
Cast: Karisma Kapoor, Nana Patekar, Shahrukh Khan, Deepti Naval
Music: Ismail Darbar
2. Zinda
Director: Sanjay Gupta
Cast: Sanjay Dutt, John Abraham
Music: Vishal-Shekhar
3. Deewangee
Director:Anees Bazmee
Cast: Ajay Devgan, Urmila Matondkar, Akshaye Khanna
Music: Ismail Darbar
And lots more……
Do leave your comments if you are not in a hurry…:-)