The Hindu Business Line : On a comedy track

How garam is Garam Masala? Priyadarsan grabs the central idea from a raucous Hollywood comedy; the Hindi version has Akshay Kumar and John Abraham chasing women (the former with spectacular success as he juggles three air-hostesses, complicated schedules, and temperaments; the latter looking on bemusedly and greedily as his pal gets `em all), and Paresh Rawal and Rajpal Yadav minding the Lothario's back.

Of the three Diwali releases, Garam Masala is the only one which has garnered 80 per cent collections; the other two, another Priyadarsan movie, Kyon Ki, and David Dhawan's Shaadi No 1, have done middling to not-so-good business.

On the first day, at Chanakya theatre at a prestigious South Delhi location, which hit upon the innovative idea of playing all three films through the day, the shows of Garam Masala and Shaadi No 1 were full, though the latter got a less than ecstatic response, and the two shows of Kyon Ki looked more than a little bereft. This was a pretty fair reflection of the movies' performance all over, too.

This past week's release pattern across North India was unusual. Instead of Friday, films were released on Wednesday, a day after Diwali, followed by public holidays on Vishwakarma, Bhai Dooj and Id. Traditionally, anyway, Diwali is meant to be the strongest week for the trade, and producers get into bitter wrangles to get release dates to coincide with the Festival Of Lights. And if the A-listers are around, everyone else, except for the most foolhardy or the couldn't-care-less types, backs off.

Last year, Yash Chopra, one of the biggest and oldest votaries of Diwali releases, put out Veer Zaara, which turned out to be the biggest grosser that year. The colourised version of Mughal-e-Azam, which released the same day, benefited hugely too. Ram Gopal Varma's Naach lost out though, as it left both critics and audiences cold.

Kyon Ki, a remake of Priyadarsan's Thalavattam, has Salman Khan playing an unhinged lover. Salman, who has been riding on a crest this year, starting with Tere Naam in 2004, and this year's hit Maine Pyar Kyun Kiya, plus a walk-on in No Entry, has no takers this time around. As an old-time publicist puts it, "Some actors should never be made to die. Just as people hated Dilip Kumar dying, so it is with Salman."

Not only has Priyadarsan shown bad judgement in locating the first half of the movie in an asylum, where the inmates are basically a bunch of loud buffoons, he also gets Salman to mope in corners, when he is not behaving in an exceedingly child-like fashion. And then, having given us a film replete with the director's over-the-top brand of humour, leavened with what he thinks are strong doses of emotion, he kills off Sallu bhai. No wonder the film's a loser.

As for David Dhawan, his downward slide was halted somewhat by two laughathons, last summer's Mujhse Shaadi Karogi and this year's Maine Pyar Kyun Kiya, both starring Salman in his trademark `I'm a bad boy but I can be good, if pushed to the wall' which he excels at. The laughs were easy, and Dhawan looked as if he was well on his way to regain lost ground. Shaadi No 1 mines tired ground and overused gags, which we've seen in all his shaadi-gharwali-baharwali movies. It's also got a collection of actors who think making people laugh is a factor of jumping around the sets (this film has to have the saddest, most artificial sets in recent times, when shooting on location is becoming more norm than exception), and reciting their lines very loudly.

The only familiar face from Dhawan's set of favourite actors is Sanjay Dutt, and even he can't rescue a movie with a brain-dead script.

So does Diwali belong only to the Yash Chopras and the Karan Johars, the kings of schmaltz? A bright young viewer who was in the mood to watch a `sweet love story' was not only disappointed but angry at Kyon Ki, and told off this columnist for having `let off' the film much too lightly.

Traditionally, according to the trade, the big-ticket `tent-pole' movies that would have done well anyway, do better in the festive season. In 2000, the last time a Diwali week was so hyped, it had Yashraj's Mohabbatein, back to back with Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Mission Kashmir. The latter won out even though the former was a breezy romance with six little-known faces; Chopra's film, a grim treatise on Kashmir and separatism, was better made and better executed.

So is that the ticket, when audiences wrapped up in festivities want to let their hair down — bubblegum and candyfloss, a `sweet' love story where all ends well, and pretty people who make them laugh?

The box-office verdict this past week cannot be clearer. Froth and fun are winners, all the way. If Kyon Ki had steered clear of gorge-inducing silliness, and focused on clean romances between Salman and his two women, Rimii and Kareena, it might have met a more positive reaction.

In the sweepstakes, Garam Masala wins out, not because it is by itself a good film: it's just that it is better than the rest. Both the beefcake and cheesecake factors are taken care of: the airhostesses, who whip in and out of Akshay Kumar's bed (we never see any of that, but it is implied; family audiences, you see, would have steered clear if Priyadarsan had been bolder), wear skimpy outfits and their brains on their sleeves. But the real sex-factor here are the men: Akshay's wicked grin, and John Abraham's `I-know-I'm-impossibly-handsome' dimples. They also, once in a while, make you laugh.

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