What if we told you that people think Kamaal R Khan, popularly known as KRK, is a better storyteller than veteran filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt?
This is Desh Drohi’s IMDb rating.
Desh Drohi, released in 2008, with all its tackiness quotient is at 1.4 out of 10.
Sadak 2, on the other hand, is at 1.1.
Well, that is that. More people find KRK’s Desh Drohi which is nothing short of cringe fest, more tolerable than Sadak 2. Bollywood, however, wants to dismiss this as ‘angry fans of Sushant Singh Rajput’ led to this. In a typical Bollywood victim playing style, the fault was of audience and not the film which was badly written and was just overall pathetic.
And before anyone jumps to their defence and claims that Bhatt’s anti-Modi stand made his film suffer, well, an average filmgoing audience does not really bother much. Salman Khan’s films usually do well because of the fandom, and not really his acting skills or storyline. Similarly, Akshay Kumar’s Laxmii bombed on the box office.
This when Akshay Kumar is attacked by ‘liberals’ on a regular basis for his alleged ‘pro-Modi’ stand. Apparently making films that talk about importance of toilets in villages just when PM Modi decided to ensure every house in India has a toilet is being ‘pro-Modi’. ‘Liberals’ fail to see the fact that despite 70 years of independence, crores of people in India had no toilets in their homes.
IMDb rating of Laxmii is 2.3.
Varun Dhavan and Sara Ali Khan starrer Coolie No 1 released on Amazon Prime over the Christmas weekend and has not been able to capture audience’s attention. Even though film ‘critics’ at media houses gave the film 3 stars, the film has zero reason anyone should waste their 2 hours of their lives on.
This was an actual scene from the film.
bollywood stop making movies please i beg #CoolieNo1pic.twitter.com/9mun5nWdjX
— 𝙖𝙮𝙪𝙨𝙝𝙞 ⁷ (@_DevAkshi_) December 25, 2020
Such tacky graphics were not even in the 1970s when one Master Raju will be polishing shoes of rich folks on railway station one moment and emerge as Amitabh Bachchan the next. Coolie no 1 is rated 1.3 on IMDb.
Chhapaak, Gunjan Saxena and other films
And while there were other movies which have done well in terms of ratings, they were problematic. Deepika Padukone starrer Chhapaak which released early this year had quite a few controversial PR stunts. Form mocking the acid attack survivors with horrifying makeup video on TikTok to Wikipedia page vandalism of Lakshmi to change name of attacker from Naeem to Rajesh, the film reached new lows.
Janhvi Kapoor starrer Karan Johar’s Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl, which was supposed to be a biopic on Indian Air Force officer Gunjan Saxena, took quite a few creative liberties. From wrongly portraying gender bias in the Air Force to copyright infringement allegations, the film may have earned at the box office, but failed to leave a mark with the audience.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Shikara also came under fire, especially from some Kashmiri Pandits who felt betrayed that Kashmiri Muslims in the film were portrayed as ‘secular’ while Kashmiri Hindus were portrayed as ‘communal’. The downplaying of the atrocities and terror inflicted on the Kashmiri Hindus also did not go down well. And then the filmmaker just dismissed the allegation of watering down of Islamic terror.
And while there were decent movies like Tanhaji which triggered the Hinduphobic portals to go completely mental and Bulbbul on Netflix which was a visual delight, most other movies released in 2020 were painful disasters, best forgotten like rest of the 2020.
