Too reel to be real

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Hrithik Roshan (above) dances with Jadu in Koi Mil Gaya

When Chulbul Pandey gets to know that Chhedi Singh (Sonu Sood) killed his mother, he is in a rage. The need for vengeance is so strong that his shirt rips off his body and flies away. The black trouser he is wearing however, mercifully remains in place! But even a die-hard Salman Khan fan cannot help gasping at the unrealistic (read bizarre) climax scene.

But Salman, who has recently earned the title “Rajinikanth of Bollywood”, is not the only one to send viewers into a state of shock. Bollywood is full of outrageous scenes. “Exaggerated action scenes are very popular these days. In fact, every genre has its own share of bizarre story ideas,” says freelance writer and film critic Jai Arjun Singh.
Ashok Kumar’s double role in Kismet (1943) was followed by many others. Two brothers growing up — one becoming an honest inspector who of all people has to arrest his own criminal brother and a mother —preferably played by Rakhi —who made sure that her son sought revenge for his father’s murder.
If these were repetitive then, we also had our own share of gasping moments when Shah Rukh Khan chased a Scorpio in a rickshaw — which had disc brakes. Or when actors just jumped off moving trains and unlike normal people who would end up with heavy hospital bills, got up, shook off the dust and moved on. The villains in Sunny Deol’s films were the unluckiest of all since no matter how many times or how barbarically they would kill the hero, Sunny would always come back to life.
So much for our macho heroes, but what surprises Ankita Sharma, a movie buff, is the sacrifice of love over friendship in love triangles. “Kareena Kapoor from Mujhse Dosti Karoge and recently Zayed Khan from Anjana Anjani are very generous friends who are hard to find in real life,” she adds.
Writer and stand-up comedian Anuvab Pal agrees with Ankita. “Some directors try to keep it this way to reach out to a larger audience and attract attention even if for the wrong reasons.”
Says assistant director Sumit Mathur, “Almost every actor and director is associated with a different kind of cinema. Anurag Kashyap represents real cinema, Karan Johar’s films are based on real feelings and emotions but the treatment is usually unreal, and then there is a fantasy cinema where heroes come home in helicopters.”
Probably a helicopter is not such a bad idea after all when you compare it with aliens dancing with villagers in Koi Mil Gaya and Rajinikanth who catches all the bullets fired in hand! All this makes one wonder why Bollywood goes to such extremes. The second part of Dabangg is already in the making. And we are yet to see what will fly off on its own this time!