The Hindu Business Line : Dhoom time

It's official. Dhoom 2, Yashraj's follow-up to the formula which fizzed hugely in 2004 — non-stop action carried out by bootylicious stars all dressed to kill — is the biggest movie of the year.

It caps a very good year, `the best we have seen in a long time', says Rajender Singh, who manages South Delhi theatre Chanakya, and monitors, just like everyone else in the industry, Bollywood's hit-flop barometer from one release to another. He has had to switch off his mobile phone on a routine basis in the past three weeks, since Dhoom 2 was released. With the PVR chain not running it because of a disagreement over margins with the production house, everyone in tony South Delhi wants to watch Dhoom 2 at Chanakya. The 1,100-seater saw 100 per cent occupancy in the first two weeks, and has only slipped to about 90 per cent in its third week.

'Tis the season of joy and merriment, and everyone in Bollywood is wearing big grins. 2006 started with a bang, with UTV's Rang De Basanti. Producer Ronnie Screwvala and his creative team were very confident of its success, but even they were taken aback at the speed with which Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's second feature captured the minds and hearts of young India. Smart marketing and promotional strategies (tie-up with upscale English language news channels, which took the cast and crew right in the midst of college students) kept RDB rocking the rafters.

Script right

Lage Raho Munnabhai, Rajkumar Hirani's second coming (as well as the Mahatma's), may have lost the going-to-the-Oscar fight to RDB, as well as its most profitable movie of the year status to the juggernaut of Dhoom 2, but for this writer, it will scrape past both to be the Movie Of The Year. Hirani is one of those rare creatures, who writes an original script, as well as his producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra who knows the value of waiting for a script which will be totally new: Munnabhai 2 came three years after the first, and was well worth the wait.

So was Vishal Bharadwaj's Omkara, for which we had to wait nearly as long. Though his version of Othello was not quite as successful as his Maqbool, it was an achievement: the use of the western UP terrain, the rustic, earthy dialogue replete with cusswords and Saif Ali Khan's superb performance have made it one of the best movies of the year. In fact, it is hard to choose between Lage Raho Munnabhai and Omkara: both come from good directors, and both have wonderful performances. Saif is clearly the Perfomer Of The Year, with Arshad Warsi, a very close second.

Among the other high grossers of the year are the summer biggies — Yashraj's Fanaa, and Rakesh Roshan's Krrish, his sequel to Koi Mil Gaya. The former was a Kunal Kohli helmed big star release, with Aamir Khan and Kajol, which coasted on the weight of the Aamir fan club, already high on RDB, as well as on the Yashraj staple of locations, songs and situations-which-wring-the-heart. The hero and blind heroine sang and danced in the first half, were thrown asunder by the interval, and came together in the second half, before the tragic end. What else can a mere mortal want?

Super-hit superhero

Krrish's terrific performance, both in India and abroad, proved a couple of points. That Hrithik needed daddy's packaging to come up trumps again (the biggest films of his career have been Roshan Sr's movies). And that we are so starved for our own superhero that we will embrace anything we get, even a bad script, a silly heroine, and a Hrithik in designer mask. The light-eyed hero is by far and away The Hero Of The Year in terms of the box office: his electric if pumped-up presence in Dhoom 2 in which he plays a savvy thief dims everyone else in the movie, including the very sexy Aishwarya Rai, who must have been relieved, given how badly her much-hyped Umrao Jaan did.

One of the biggest disappointments of 2006 will be Karan Johar's much-awaited Kabhi Alvidaa Na Kehna, the director's take on bad marriages and infidelity. Shah Rukh Khan as an adulterous husband was bad enough; his irritable father didn't endear him to his legions of female fans, and Rani Mukherji's incessant tears were the last straw.

Clearly, it has been the year of the Big Movie, but with a difference. The Big Movie has been backed by the Big Producer who is leaving the era of mom and pop production, and moving into a more professionally managed, more corporatised environment. Producers like Ronnie Screwvala, and Pritish Nandy Communications' Rangita Nandy, as well as Vidhu Vinod Chopra who is a filmmaker in his own right, are not just moneybags. They are creative producers, involved in every aspect of the movie: not for nothing is it said that the movies from the Yashraj stables are nurtured and mentored at each step by Aditya Chopra, who remains in this time of the instant-byte and instant fame, still as media shy and reclusive as ever.

Equally clearly, it has been the Year Of The Small Movie. Again with a difference. These are small in budget and in the A-list star quotient, but are high in concept and have the Big Creative Producers handling the all-important aspect of marketing and publicity. PNC's uproarious Pyar Ke Side Effects, in which the unlikely pair of Mumbai boy Rahul Bose and Delhi gal Mallika Sherawat made whoopee, made money. So did UTV's Khosla Ka Ghosla, whose biggest stars were Boman Irani and Anupam Kher tussling over a plot of land in a deserted patch in the Capital. In both films, the accent was solidly on the plot and the performances; the look of the movie did not overpower it.

Bollywood, big-time Bollywood, is heading towards an umbrella-studio system, which will, like the Hollywood giants, begin owning more and more of the process. Yashraj and UTV have their favourite directors, and oversee the film from script, pre, and post-production to the release, and after. These are the two biggest studios in Bollywood today, and both are making their kinds of movies. And yet, there is an acknowledgement that both the demands of the market as well as audiences have changed drastically, and everyone is calibrating their products accordingly.

The shift has shown up clearly as the year ends, with Yashraj's Kabul Express. The film is beautifully shot, but the story is set in war-torn Afghanistan, and there is no Aamir or Shah Rukh or bosomy heroines or humungous sets and songs. It's about two journalists seeking a story. There will always be candyfloss in Big Bollywood. But the advent of the thinking cap has begun.

Shubhra's pick:

Movie of the Year - Lage Raho Munnabhai

Performer of the Year: Saif Ali Khan (Arshad Warsi, a very close second).

Superhit super-hero: Hrithik Roshan

Disappointment of the year: Karan Johar's Kabhi Alvidaa Na Kehna