The year 2016 will go down in the annals of the history of Bollywood as the worst ever year in recent times. Out of the 250 and odd films in Hindi that were released in 2016, barely a handful could prove to be grosser while many of them ended up either as flops or average hits while a few qualified to be unmitigated disasters.
We will first look at the duds in the last year. They were over confident Ashutosh Gowarikar’s Hrithik Roshan starrer Mohenjo Daro, Inder Kumar’s Great Grand Masti starring Riteish Deshmukh, Vivek Oberoi, and Aftab Shivdasani. Rakesh Om Prakash Mehra’s Mirzya which introduced Anil Kapoor’s son Harshvardhan Kapoor and Sayyami Kher, the Farhan Akhtar starrer Rock On 2, which was a fall up of his earlier Rock On, Fitoor starring Aditya Roy Kapoor and Katrina Kaif, the Amitabh Bachchan starrer Te3N, Vikram Bhatt’s Raaz Reboot , the John Abraham starrer Rocky Handsome, the Sidharth Malhotra-Katrina Kaif starrer Baar Baar Dekho, the Riteish Deshmukh-Nargis Fakhri musical Banjo helmed by Ravi Jadhav who made his debut in Hindi with the film after his successful innings in Marathi films. Wait. There were still many more flops.
They were Shivaay, which flopped despite earning 100 odd crores at the box office. Airlift Raja Menon’s Airlift, which recreates the evacuation of over one lakh Indians in 1990 from war-torn Kuwait, was an example of the new movie that caught the audience’s fancy of late. Slickly produced and capitalizing on its A-list lead Akshay Kumar, the movie showed that for all their blather, family-run companies and studios controlled by suits often miss out on the fundamentals of sensible filmmaking, like solid stories, tight screenplays, and credible performances.The movie’s Rs 100-cror plus box office also proves Akshay Kumar’s enduring appeal. The all-purpose star with the genial smile, high fitness levels, and old-fashioned charm has had three successive hits in 2016 with Airlift, Housefull 3 and Rustom.
Akshay Kumar has gone through so many iterations in his career that he now has only one way to go. He has appeared in borderline B-grade spy and cop thrillers, comedies, romances, action flicks and multi-cast titles. Kumar’s command over audience attention has wobbled in recent years, but he has managed to put his career back on track by choosing roles well and headlining films with under-control budgets and themes that appeal to wide sections of moviegoers. This stud knows when to canter and when to break out into a gallop.
The other flops were Tum Bin 2, Tutak Tutak Tutiya, which was produced by Sonu Sood, Force 2, October 31, Raman Raghav 2.0, Freaky Ali, Saat Uchakkey, Udta Punjab and last but not the least the Shah Rukh Khan starrer Fan, which also sunk at the box office, like Shah Rukh Khan’s earlier flop Dilwale which brought down his credibility at the box office a notch lower. Like Yashraj banner’s Befikre which starred Aditya Chopra’s favorite muses Ranveer Singh and Vaani Kapoor who seems to get offers only from YRF.
On the brighter side, we had films which brought cheer to the sinking industry and proved to be the biggest grosser of the year like Yashraj’s Sultan starring Salman Khan and Anushka Chopra, which was a full package entertainer with A-list stars, simplistic plot and chart-topping music, which rescued Yash Raj Films from its questionable choices for the past glossy few years. Nitesh Tiwari’s Dangal starring Aamir Khan, towards the end of the year was the icing on the cake which brought a smile on everyone’s lips in the industry.
Sajid Nadiadwala’s Houseful 3 starring Akshay Kumar, Riteish Deshmukh, Sajid Nadiadwala’s Baaghi, the Akshay Kumar starrer Rustom based on the notorious Nanavati Murder case, Karan Johar’s Shakun Batra directed Kapoor & Sons, the Shah Rukh Khan-Alia Bhatt starrer Dear Zindagi, the Shoojit Sarkar produced film Pink starring Amitabh Bachchan and Taapsee Pannu with Kirti Kulhari, the Akshay Kumar starrer Airlift directed by Raja Krishna Menon and last but not the least the Karan Johar directed Ae Dil Hai Mushqil starring Ranbir Kapoor with Anushka Chopra and Aishwarya Rai. Among the hits there were also Atul Kasbekar produced biopic Neerja directed by Ram Madhvani and starring Sonam Kapoor, about the Pan-Am air hostess who died saving lives during a terrorist attack in 1986, flew into hit territory from the first day, the Sushant Singh Rajput starrer M S Dhoni The Untold Story directed by Neeraj Pandey, Happy Bhaag Jayegi starring Abhay Deol
A studio’s mandate is to generate and acquire projects that can add to its image, and Eros, which had exceptionally a good period in 2015 with films like Bajrangi Bhaijaan, NH 10, Badlapur, Tanu Weds Manu 2 and Bajirao Mastani is doing well with its regional slate. With the exception of Happy Bhaag Jayegi which scraped through at the box office, Bollywood remains a hit and miss affair for the studio, which is ironic considering its deep pockets and its experience in the sector.
The disastrous failure at the box office of Fitoor, Abhishek Kapoor’s much-vaunted adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations indicated the perils of blindly backing wannabe thoroughbreds. Producers and financiers quite often get excited by famous surnames and yield to pressures from pushy parents who want to fund their children’s dreams without reaching for their own wallets. Movies based on the imagined charms of star sons and daughters regularly tumble off the Bollywood assembly line. Vashu Bhagnani’s faith in his son Jackky Bhagnani has yielded at least six disposable films, including Kal Kissne Dekha and Welcome to Karachi. Salman Khan backed the forgettable debuts of star kids Sooraj Pancholi and Athiya Shetty in Hero (2015 while Aamir Khan’s nephew Imran Khan continues to soldier away in front of the camera in the hope that it will recognize his thus-far hidden talents.
Poorly mounted productions and underwhelming returns have scarred Balaji Telefilms.The publicly listed company headed by Ekta Kapoor finally realized that the movie business is an altogether different kettle of fish. Reeling from the inadequate reception of its last five films in 2016 (A Flying Jatt, Great Grand Masti, Udta Punjab, Azhar, Kya Kool Hain Hum 3, the company has decided to rethink its business strategy and crawled back into the confines of the drawing room, with its staple of TV serials.
Bhushan Kumar, unlike his late father Gulshan Kumar who used to make religious or devotional films with regularity ended up on the formula of making pornographic films with flop actors and desperate actresses who had fallen out of favor at the box office on meager amounts. Unfortunately his latest attempt- Wajah Tum Ho flopped miserably in spite of the blatant skin show and kisses galore.
One hopes that 2017 will prove to be better than the year that has passed by, with its slate of films which are bigger and better.
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