Shah Rukh rules first half

With the year vaunting across the halfway mark, the box-office results for the annum’s first half can now be deliberated upon. Significantly, of the ‘Top 5 Grossers’, while Main Hoon Na, Masti and Hum Tum have worked a profit, Khakee and Lakshya have had patchy luck in other parts of the country.

Shah Rukh proves he’s El Supremo with Main Hoon Na. Dependable Devgan shows up in two (Khakee, Masti) conditional earners this half-annum while veteran Amitabh Bachchan too figures in the ‘Top 5 Grossers’ list, twice (Khakee, Lakshya).

If one were to rank the heroes purely according to the box-office performance of their films in Mumbai, the list will read: Shah Rukh, Ajay Devgan, Amitabh, Akshay Kumar, Vivek Oberoi, Aftab, Ritesh, Saif and Hrithik. The pecking order in the heroines is as follows: Sushmita Sen, Aishwarya Rai, Lara Dutta, Rani and Preity.

Barring the marshmallow-centred Hum Tum, where Rani Mukerji shares equal screen space with Saif, the box-office reveals that it’s the males who drive audiences to the theatres — Shah Rukh is the main attraction of Main Hoon Na, Khakee boasts of an army of heroes, Masti has three musketeers Vivek, Aftab and Ritesh cornering the hosannas while Lakshya showcases Hrithik in an author-backed role.

However, besides Rani, two other women have successfully challenged the male bastion — the commercial-to-the-core director Farah Khan
(Main Hoon Na) and sex symbol Mallika Sherawat.

If one were to compare a film’s grosses to its budget, the small-budgeted Murder, which rides on Mallika’s bare shoulders, would be a bigger hit than most of the films mentioned above. However, in terms of total grosses, Murder’s Mumbai collections of Rs 205 lakh ensure it only the No 7 spot. (Yuva with Rs 208 lakh would have made it to No 6).

Interestingly, last year’s biggest hit Koi Mil Gaya had grossed Rs 536 lakh, a figure that none of the above mentioned films is likely to peak.

After the macroscopic view, let’s narrow our vision to the current scenario. Lakshya (Rs 88.4 lakh) misfires in the second week after a staggering initial. It bleeds by as much as Rs 73.8 lakh (45 per cent) in Mumbai.

However, while it may still manage to keep the distributors safe
(if not happy) in Mumbai, its chances of breaking even in other centres are bleak.

The new release this week is Nagesh Kukunoor’s Hyderabad Blues 2, a stilted, self-conscious comedy with a few genuine chuckles but little by way of new insights into its theme — modern marriage — and even less by way of plot. Well at least, the characters laugh a lot at themselves.

A couple of bawdy but funny lines (“We get paid only if you get laid” is the ad line for a marriage bureau) and a captivating cameo by perky Elahe Hiptoola as the heroine’s outrageously outspoken friend, fail to prop up the film’s simplistic story — wife ties herself up in knots over her husband’s affair-that-never-was.

The moral seems to be — make your partner wear tight marriage rings and your spouse’s chastity belt will remain intact. The most enjoyable moments are the interactions between Nagesh and his parents.

Perhaps if more men had the courage to speak their mind against nosey parents like he does (“With parents like these who needs enemies”) one would witness fewer divorces. Hyderabad Blues 2 fails to witness long queues.

48 hours from now

Salman Khan will venture into the box-office arena again with the first of a slew of films — last year he was seen in a full-fledged role in only one film, Tere Naam. He will now play a policeman in the Punit Isarr-directed vendetta drama, Garv.