What’s the hoo-haa about, for Christ’s sake? This Krrish thing isn’t really as cool as it is being made out to be.
At best, Krrish, designed and crafted by the producer-director as a vehicle for his hunky star-son Hrithik Roshan, is a good ol’ entertainer in the classic Bollywood tradition. No narrative logic, no psychological realism and loads of shallow romance complete with stale song and dance routines, but all in all three hours of undemanding, unalloyed fun.
No wonder the film has whipped up a storm at the turnstiles. Krrish is after all India’s first film about an invincible superhero driven predominantly by the magic of special effects and daring stunts. Hrithik, on his part, is in fine fettle as brings a comic-strip hero to life.
To that extent, Krrish is certainly a successful film – it achieves what it sets out to do. No Hindi film has ever had more than 1000 prints released simultaneously in the domestic sector and the overseas markets ranging all the way from sprawling United States to tiny Singapore. The bumper opening has, of course, proved the efficacy of that strategy beyond an iota of doubt.
Krrish
isn’t quite the sort of cinema that could show Bollywood the way forward. For one, there is little that is groundbreaking in the film except for the fact that some of the action sequences, conceived and choreographed by a team of foreign technicians, had never been seen before in an Indian mainstream release.
Even as a fantasy, it never quite rises above the predictable. Fantasies have always been the staple of popular Hindi cinema. Yes, it has never had a flying superhero taking on the forces of evil, but even the most staid of Bollywood family dramas have a strong strain of the unbelievable about them. Action heroes in Mumbai movies are people endowed with the sort of strength and courage that are beyond the reach of ordinary mortals.
Indeed, when a Hindi film captures the imagination of the masses, it is primarily because of the way in which the hero tides over the challenges of life, be it wooing the girl of his dreams against all odds or standing up tall against a posse of baddies.
{{/usCountry}}Indeed, when a Hindi film captures the imagination of the masses, it is primarily because of the way in which the hero tides over the challenges of life, be it wooing the girl of his dreams against all odds or standing up tall against a posse of baddies.
{{/usCountry}}Whether it is an Amitabh Bachchan taking on the goons inside a godown in Trishul or a Shahrukh Khan winning over an entire family for the sake of the woman he loves in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge or a common-man hero who goes invisible to outwit the villains in Mr India, popular Hindi films have always operated at the same formulaic level.
Indeed, commercial Hindi cinema thrives on wish fulfilment. No crisis is ever too big for the conventional Hindi film hero. He takes life as it comes and usually emerges from it all largely unscathed, a spring in his steps, a song on his lips, a smile across his face and a girl in his arms. Life as it ought to be, not life as it really is.
So how, pray, is Krrish really different? Except for the obvious fact that he his appeal and strength hinges on a stunning range of never-before-seen special effects and stunts, Krrish is cast in a strictly hackneyed mould. He falls head over heels in love with the first girl he meets, dotes on his daadima, and hates the sight of men who want to destroy the world a la Mogambo.
When provoked into action, he turns magically into an unstoppable masked crusader. Take away the mask and Krrish is just your average old masala movie macho man flexing his muscles while he flies around like a winged object.
Old hat? Yes indeed, that is precisely what Krrish is. It is the sort of cinema that, despite all the state-of-the-art trappings and lustrous production values generously showered on it, takes Indian movies cinema back to the days of Sampoorna Ramayan, which, as we all know, thrived on huge doses of fantasy and valour. But in regressing, Krrish ends up committing an even bigger folly: it borrows concepts liberally from the Superman flicks.
But Krrish is a Hindi film hero. He knows not where to draw the line. He is caped like Batman, climbs the sides of buildings like Spiderman, zooms around like Superman and has the strength of the mythic Hanuman. If that is the kind of cinema that is going to be the future of Bollywood, someone please give me a ticket to the moon. I am outta here!