Year 2045.
It’s Diwali and the biggies clash again at the theatres. Rohit Shetty’s Singham 14 takes on Anees Bazmee’s Bhool Bhulaiyaa 13. There’s a lot of excitement around the releases. As the reviewer begins to key in his analysis, he is confused where to begin. He has been doing it for years. He could copy-paste his review of both from any of his earlier pieces and it would make no difference.
Heck! He does not even need to watch the movies. He knows the plotlines of both by heart now. But it’s a job he has to perform. Bajirao Singham retired from service five years ago. He didn’t make it to the rank of director general of police despite his heroics year after year. After putting local thugs and a crooked politician in place in 2011 in Goa, which got him national attention, he has gone places, literally, to fix the bad guys. In 2024, he went to Sri Lanka to demolish the crime empire of a revenge-seeking terrorist, Danger Lanka, who had kidnapped his wife.
After that he fought criminals in neighbouring Pakistan, China and Nepal before taking on terror syndicates in the entire SAARC countries. In 2033, he was on a mission to eliminate enemies threatening to destabilise the NATO nations. His role went bigger when the US government enlisted his support to counter the threat of aliens. Still no top job for Singham. According to industry buzz, the director felt top ranking police officers were mostly pen-weilding, file-pushing old men. That didn’t suit the image of Singham.
This time he is at the lead of an international team comprising Veer Sooryavanshi, Sangram Simmba Bhalerao, Lady Singham Shakti Shetty, Satya Bali and a few others, including some foreign cops, to save his nerdish granddaughter and ailing wife from the clutches of thugs from planet Mars. The inter-planetary goons also have designs to destroy planet earth. Daya is in the team in case they require to break open doors in the distant planet. As usual, vehicles do cartwheels, helicopters explode and bad guys are air-borne like flies.
Phew! The reviewer is frustrated. What’s new to write about? Then he decides to switch to Bhool Bhulaiyaa 13.
Manjulika is still around. Since ghosts don’t age like humans she looks the same as in earlier installments of the movie. Besides her, there are Anjulika, Sanjulika, Lanjulika, Nanjulika to scare the hell out of people. It has been revealed at some point that Manjulika’s mother had sextuplets. The last one, name not revealed, has teamed up with Stree to fight the evil relative who plotted the death of their mother and separation of the sisters to grab joint family property. Ruhaan ‘Rooh Baba’ Randhawa, who is still around, must open the charm-locked door in the house to uncover the truth.
Sigh! The reviewer is tired now, and worried. How long will this go on? Won’t people ever grow up?
Back to 2024.
Franchise films are entrenched in our film culture now. We have two of them Singham Again and Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 running successfully in the theatres. With too many of them, we are expected to get more of the same around the year. That’s a worry. In this filmmaking model formula rules. Star-worship continues. Originality is stunted; creativity too. The excuse is the same: people want entertainment, we deliver it. Who are you to question the taste of the audience? Aren’t you being snobbish? Not really. We as film buffs love to be entertained. But we want interesting experiments with the creative medium within the commercial framework. It’s not a big ask.
Blockbusters from the South have set the example. Why don’t we have a Baahubali, Pushpa, RRR or KGF from the Hindi film industry? It’s simple; the directors of these movies stand apart from their Hindi film counterparts in terms of creative imagination. The audience gets bang for his buck and don’t feel taken for a ride. The latter wallows in mediocrity. At some point, the Hindi film industry must have a look at the quality of franchise films.
(By arrangements with Perspective Bytes)