The Hindu Business Line : Maiden over

By the time you read this, the new Hindi releases out last Friday would have gone like the wind. Out of the theatres. And out of our minds. The IPL extravaganza is not the only thing that's been playing spoilsport. Nor are the unseasonal spells of rain keeping people away from the theatres. It's Bollywood which is doing itself no favours by churning out films which are sweeping the bottom of the barrel.

Don Muthuswamystars Mithun Chakraborty and a clutch of no-hopers. It has the ageing star who was weathering out the slope of stardom quite nicely by doing sensible cinema, mostly in Bengal, suddenly losing all sense of proportion. Reprising a popular role he had done in a 1980s film ( Agneepath) with Amitabh Bachchan, he turns into the kind of Tamilian you can see only in bad Hindi films. He is made to say aiyyoin the most execrable accent, and loudly ask for idli and chatni and narial paani (obviously South Indians don't eat any other kind of food), and hop in and out of his veshti. He's also given a screechy daughter who refuses to marry a hood (which girl in her right mind would?), and an overdressed wife who looks as if she'd rather be anywhere other than on the sets.

After two-and-a-half hours of this, the Spanish Inquisition would look mild. Mithun is a fine actor, and is still flexing his acting muscles in parts that ask something of him. His last big outing in a Hindi film, ironically, helmed by South Indian Mani Ratnam ( Guru, 2007) was impactful. He plays a powerful but ethical newspaper baron who shapes the destiny of the lead characters. Earlier this year, he showed up in an inconsequential role in My Name Is Anthony Gonsalvesas a karate-knowing priest and held our attention for a couple of minutes.

But this is bad beyond belief. It's minus C grade. What could Mithun be thinking of? And what could Ashim Samanta, son of the veteran director-producer Shakti Samanta, who directed the film, be thinking of? Can we sincerely hope for no more collaboration on this front?

Mithun may have been trying to make up for his son's poor showing in Jimmy, his debut film earlier this month. Mimoh, who looks nothing like his father (he reminds you of his mom, yesteryear actress Yogita Bali), tries doing everything his father has done; he break-dances on stage, he romances a leading lady, and he bashes up the bad guys. This is one of those films which had no business being conceived, let alone made.

Last Friday's other awful offering, Dhoom Dhadaka,gives us seasoned comedians such as Anupam Kher, Satish Shah and Satish Kaushik in a script so lax that everything slips right through. A dissatisfied housewife, always on the lookout for things which will make her happy, is the butt (pun intended) of vulgar gags, which is fine as long as the filmmakers put up a warning signal for unsuspecting parents who might look at this film as a good summer-outing for their kids. Simply affixing a U/A tag is not enough.

SILLY SEASON

Bollywood's silly season stretched right through April, but May has been even worse. The big-ticket holiday release, the B. R. Chopra production Bhootnath, about a ghost and a little boy, continues to run because there's no other option. Amitabh plays a crotchety bhoot, who's basically a deeply hurt father of a bad son who left the family home in Goa and went off to live with his wife and child.

Along comes the mischievous Banku and befriends the bhoot, who turns from surly to saccharine in the space of a couple of songs.

No one's knocking the intent of the film, but in the zeal to rope in the family (this comes from the `other' Chopra camp - B R being brother of the more illustrious Yash - which has resurrected itself with weepies such as Baaghbanand Baabul, featuring fathers, mothers, and good and bad children), Bhootnathturns into a pastiche, which tries too hard to please everybody and ends up lacking zing. Amitabh looks as if his costume designer was the same as the one who dressed up Shabana Azmi in Makdi (she played a witch), with long filthy nails and a long dusty overcoat. Some nifty special effects and a walk-on appearance by Shah Rukh are overwhelmed by the tears everyone is forced to shed in the end.

SAVING GRACE

The only film which has sustained itself this month is Mukesh Bhatt's Jannat, in which Emraan Hashmi plays a cricket match fixer. The Bhatts' `get-em-in-the-jugular' approach is in evidence in both plot and structure : Emraan typifies a certain kind of young person who wants to get very rich very fast, so he gets rid of his scruples and his country, joins hands with a big bad guy in South Africa, leaves behind mere `betting', and graduates to `setting'.

The IPL having emerged as a popular discussion point may have something to do with the film's slightly-better-than-average showing. It's also got to do with Emraan's character: he knows what he is doing is wrong, but the lure of the lucre is too strong for him to resist. So he continues to lie to his girlfriend and keeps doing what he has promised not to.

Giving in to temptation is a very human trait and makes Emraan's weakbut- attractive character immediately identi- fiable. If Jannathad come in the middle of a strong wave of movies from Mumbai, it may have got swept away. But here and now, claim its producers, it is a hit. Just five days after its release, the cast and crew of the movie gathered to celebrate in full media glare. Mahesh Bhatt claimed that it was an even bigger hit than Vishesh Films' biggest hit till now, Raaz. There was a time when 25 weeks of a run in cinema halls made it a `silver jubilee', an almost forgotten term. Now it is five days to a sixer. Or a duck. This is the current of state of things in Bollywood.

shubhra.gupta@gmail.com