Shah Rukh Khan : The Lord of 2007

It will take more than the combined might of a Hollywood studio and one of India’s most successful directors of date to dislodge SRK from his throne.

So, who’s the king of the castle?

In Bollywood, there’s no formal crowing, no oohs of mock surprise, no clasping of hand-on-mouth for that perfect byte. Everyone knows that 2007 has been, unarguably, Shah Rukh Khan’s year.

This year’s double Diwali dhamaka has turned into almost-universal thumbs-up for SRK’s Om Shanti Om, and almost equal derision for Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Saawariya. Post that crucial first weekend, trade figures have pegged the former, a 70’s joyride through Bollywood, a clear winner, both in India and overseas (Om Shanti Om is reported to have made more than £5 million pounds in the UK, while Saawariya has barely managed a little over £16,000; in the US too, the former is way ahead in the box-office stakes).

Though it will take another week or so to really get the figures down in India, the clash of the titans has made a couple of things clear. It will take more than the combined might of a Hollywood studio and one of India’s most successful directors of date (Sony Pix and SLB) to dislodge SRK from his throne. And that nothing succeeds like success: India is still going rah-rah after the splendid showing of Chak De: audiences are still in like-mode with the story of a dispossessed hockey coach who whips an unlikely team into a winning machine. SRK will have to do something seriously wrong to start sliding from here on.

In retrospect, it’s very easy to go on a blame-game round, but it was evident from the opening Friday that a light-hearted spoof on all things Bollywood, drawing an arc of 30 years, was a better festive offering, than a relentless black-and-blue-tinted ode to Bhansali’s favourite filmmakers, inspired by a Dostoevsky short story White Nights. Saawariya is more a series of still paintings than a film, gorgeous but which leave you unmoved. You admire the handiwork of the cinematographers and the set designers, but nothing about the plight of the young lovers engages you.

Fun and flashback

In comparison, Farah Khan’s revisiting the 70s’ era of polka-dotted shirts, big collars, bigger hair, and long sideburns is a lark. At least in the first half. So you can sit there, and be transported back to the high melodrama of that time, where filmy moms would feed aloo parathas and kheer to their beloved betas, and know in their dil that their sons will make it big. The second half is unexciting, but it is still possible to coast on some leftover fun-and-games. And like Saawariya’s brand-new lead pair, Ranbir Raj and Sonam, which has been appreciated, OSO’s debutant leading lady, Deepika, has gained huge mileage.

The part of the movie-making chain which will hurt from Saawariya’s performance will be some of its distributors (the producers, Sony Pix, have already made a table profit, before the movie hit the screens). The distributors of OSO, Eros International, who reportedly paid upwards of Rs 70 crore for the film, are crowing about how OSO will be the biggest movie for them this year, even better than Partner, the other comedy which viewers embraced with enthusiasm earlier this year.

So, SRK it is.

King Khan clearly lords it… as 2007’s Hero no.1

(Excerpts)
Shubhra Gupta, Business Line India