The Hindu Business Line : Youth's the flavour this season

The year 2004 finds the film industry in turmoil. While there is talk of a badly performing box-office, there is also confidence about the wave of professionalism coming in and excitement about dramatic shifts in formula.

Cinema-goers wait outside a Mumbai theatre screening the film Main Hoon Na.

A real summer bonanza is set to unspool in a theatre near you. Bollywood, which has Rs 150 crore riding on its A-listers, caters to all tastes in the next three months: Testosterone-driven actioners, three-hankie weepies, full-bodied romances, coming-of-age flicks. You want it, you'll get it. The smash-hit opening of Shah Rukh Khan's Rs 20 crore Main Hoon Na has set the tone for the season. First-time director Farah Khan, who had amassed a formidable reputation as a choreographer in Bollywood, persuaded `good friend' Shah Rukh to produce her film.

Currently, Shah Rukh just happens to be the most saleable star in the Mumbai firmament. As a bonus, he also plays the lead. The movie, an over-the-top comic-book mix of everything that Bollywood likes doing (a little bit of drama, some comedy, some action and lots of emotion), has notched up full houses in its first week in Maharashtra, and Delhi-Uttar Pradesh, the two territories which can make or break an A-grade film. The film targets the 12-25 age-group, as well as Shah Rukh goupies around the globe, who can be relied upon to worshipfully watch their hero en masse, regardless of what he does.

Not that he doesn't do it all here: As a patriotic army major, he totes mean-looking machine-guns, and shoots his enemies full of large holes; he goes back to college as a `senior student' to rescue a couple of rebellious teenagers from a sorry fate, and serenades the drop-dead gorgeous Sushmita Sen; he also finds time to cement amity between India and Pakistan.

Mian Hoon Na is so resolutely a no-brainer that the only effort you have to make during the movie is to fetch your coke from the counter. Shah Rukh's bankrolling of Farah Khan's khichdi script, which claims lineage with the entertainment czars of the 1970s, Nasir Hussain and Manmohan Desai, has jumpstarted the fortunes of his new production company, Red Chillies Entertainment. His earlier ventures as a producer made in conjunction with two other good friends, director Aziz Mirza and actress Juhi Chawla, failed. Both the distinctly-themed but unconventional Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani, and Asoka, did not appeal to the masses.

For his third film, he hedged his bets with a co-production with UTV. Chalte Chalte was an `adult romance', which in Bollywood-speak means, boy meets girl, they get married, separate, come back together. In the movies it is choosing to endorse, the new millennium audience is showing contradictory preferences. On the one hand, it is demanding difference in terms of stories and treatment. On the other, it is baulking at too much out-of-the-way stuff.

The initial success (it is poised to become one of the biggest hits of the year) of the tacky, relentlessly loud, and determinedly low-IQ Main Hoon Na tells filmmakers two very important things — that, barring a few unfortunate exceptions, star power backed by hummable music works almost all the time. And that there is a vast, undemanding segment out there, which will settle quite happily for flash, gloss and `time-pass' entertainment. If you are older, and a little less patient, Main Hoon Na is very hard going. But the collection figures prove that die-hard filmgoers' demographics are in the movie's favour. Clearly, youth is the flavour of the season.

Coming up next week is Mani Ratnam's Yuva, which means, literally, `young': His second Hindi movie stars Bollywood's most intelligent star, Ajay Devgan, an upcoming actor who seems to have hit a slow curve of late, Vivek Oberoi, and a potential star who is still waiting for his first real hit, Abhishek Bachchan. They play young men, very different in their origins but focused on the same thing — a search of self.

The third eagerly awaited film, Farhan Akhtar's Lakshya (Rs 25 crore) promises to be another `discovery of the self' opus: Hrithik Roshan plays an amiable layabout who finds his real calling in the backdrop of the Kargil war. Considering the 29-year-old director's Dil Chahta Hai was Bollywood's first unabashed celebration of the urban, rich yuva, will Lakshya (translated: aim, mission) be more of the same, or will it open up fresh avenues?

Second movies are make or break time: Lakshya is up for a mid-June release. Then there's the Yash Chopra produced Hum Tum, another adult romance (reportedly a take-off on When Harry Met Sally) featuring love, marriage and break-up, starring Saif Ali Khan and Rani Mukherji. Expect pretty foreign locales, and loads of impish charm both stars are known to exude.

The action men will be out in full force too: Aan, `Men At Work', Dev, Deewar - Let's Bring The Prisoners Home, are all strung out in the coming months. According to those who have seen the trial shows, the latter is a gritty explosive prisoners-of-war story set in an across-the-border camp. Both the Rs 20-crore-plus Aan, and Dev are equally big-budget, full-throttle cop dramas: The trade is upbeat about these movies, because action traditionally does well, especially in the North. The challenge is to find a way to tread the middle path: While viewers are rejecting formula-ridden violence, they are also leery of cop movies like Khakee, which turned out to be too classy and therefore too confusing.

As 2004 gets set to hit mid-stride, both as a long-time filmgoer and critic, one gets a sense of an industry in turmoil. Insiders one speaks to will always start a conversation by moaning about the sad state of affairs at the box-office, and then, in the same breath, claim confidence about the distinct wave of professionalism that is coming in. There is also a palpable excitement about the tiny shifts the formulaic, riding-on-star-power movies are making, as well as audacious leaps some of the sharply-realised small films are taking. So, grab that popcorn, and get set; whether they are big or small, the movies can only get better!

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