The Hindu Business Line : Carry on, Munna Bhai!

For two full days, when everybody else was screening the latest release, Lage Raho Munna Bhai, PVR was not running the movie. The reason: Disagreement over terms between the premium exhibitor chain, and producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra and distributor Anil Thadani. The latter wanted more of what's called a `theatrical' share; the exhibitors were adamant on the figure they had quoted. Chopra, supremely confident of his product, decided to stick to his guns. A loose conglomerate of the other multiplexes, with PVR till that stage, buckled down. PVR lost out on the excellent opening that the film enjoyed, till news came in that an agreement had been reached between the two parties and that PVR has been running it since Sunday.

Says a sharp-eyed industry observer, "The content providers have sent a strong signal that they are calling the shots now." So in a situation like this, who wins and who loses? Chopra, according to the same observer, has already made a table profit (estimated production cost between Rs 8 crore and Rs 10 crore, and the rights have gone for Rs 10-12 crore). All overflow place him in a better and better position. When a similar sort of deadlock happened in May with Fanaa, PVR backed off and played the movie. But then, that was a Yashraj release, and no one in their right minds wants to offend those Chopras. Clearly, Vidhu Vinod is not in the same league.

Those who have seen the movie know that this Chopra has backed that rare Bollywood movie — the one with an original story, which has universal appeal. Rajkumar Hirani's first Munna movie (2003) resurrected Sanjay Dutt's flagging image, turned the smart-talking `tapori' from a slap-happygoon who kidnaps and extorts to a latter-day Robin Hood-cum-Forrest Gump figure, who combines street-smartness with heart, and saves lives and wins hearts.

Lage Raho... carries on from where the first one left off. A large part of the three intervening years were spent with the director hard at work on the script. Hirani believes in living with his story. The writing of it has to make him laugh and cry; exactly what he hopes will happen when we see the movie. Lage Raho scores supremely high on those counts and more.

It is a humdinger of an entertainer, which connects to our minds and hearts at the same time. When was the last time that Mahatma Gandhi was genuinely revered? Hirani takes that one thing — the forgotten teachings of the Mahatma, and what he has been reduced to in this mercenary day and age — and makes a wonderful movie out of it. The only way Munna Bhai will get a chance to meet his lady love, pretty radio jockey Jahnvi, is to win a Gandhi quiz. So he is dragged off by his faithful gofer Circuit (played superbly again by Arshad Warsi) to a museum, which houses millions of books and journals, dust-laden for decades, as well as the ghost of the man himself.

Like all really good movies, Lage Raho... works at several levels. It's a successful sequel of a first successful movie. It is a story which gives us several memorable, delightful characters (apart from Munna and Circuit, there's also Boman Irani, the irascible dean of the medical college who got bested in Munna Bhai MBBS, as Lucky Singh the happy-jolly-mean land shark who again has to bite the dust, but not before he has made us chortle hugely; there's Vidya Balan in her second sprightly screen appearance after Parineeta, and a host of others who add to the value of the ensemble).

But what really sets it apart from the run-of-the-mill comedy is the sub-text woven through the film. The Gandhi apparition, who can only be seen by poor Munna, preaches, sure. That's what he is there for. But he does so with a smile and chuckle, and a nod and a wink. This is not a Gandhi that is for burying in History books, and for resurrecting annually on October 2 in fake, hypocritical speeches made under the national flag, where the gathering is just dying for the `neta' to stop the speech so that they can get the free `laddoos'.

This is a Gandhi who can be a mentor, and, importantly, a friend. He becomes Munna's constant companion, and corrects him gently but firmly when the time is right. Don't we all want someone like that in our lives, wise and gentle and with us forever?

Munna's `chemical locha' in the brain is set to become as much a part of folklore as his jaadu ki jhappi in the earlier movie. He told doctors where to get off in the first movie; he shows up lawyers in this one, as a lying, conniving, thieving bunch who cannot be redeemed. Hopefully, he'll get after politicians in the next.

Two big releases, up next, Don 2 and Dhoom 2, are also sequels, and also slated to be box-office bonanzas. Now that Chopra has struck out for the producers, it will be interesting to see what Ritesh Sidhwani, the Don 2 producer and director Farhan Akhtar's long-time professional partner will do when it comes to dickering over terms. Ditto for Aditya Chopra, producer of Dhoom 2. These standoffs between producers and exhibitors look all set to stay.