The year 2012 was a year of great movies for Hindi cinema, from the perspective of the arts, commerce and even science. On the commercial front, Salman Khan rocked the box office with two huge chartbusters, ‘Ek Tha Tiger’ and ‘Dabangg 2’ while Khiladi Kumar also chipped in with ‘Rowdy Rathore’ and ‘Housefull 2’. All these movies made it to the top 10 box office hits list. A couple of monster hits from Ajay Devgan also made it to the top 10, such as ‘Bol Bachchan’ and ‘Son of Sardar’. Last year also saw Karan Johar shaking his legs as the judge of a Dance Reality Show. Johar went on to re-make his father’s biggest hit, ‘Agneepath’. The year gone by also featured the last epic love story from Yash Chopra – ‘Jab Tak Hai Jaan’. Aamir Khan’s return to commercial cinema via the movie ‘Talaash’ was not the big success it was expected to be. There was however, “Barfi” which perfectly bridged the gap between business, art and entertainment.
While some of these movies made it to the Top 10 box office list, not all of them will go on to be actual Top 10 movies. From among all the commercial hits, ‘Dabangg 2’ stands out as a completely entertaining movie in terms of acting, drama, action and very importantly highly trendy and catchy music. So, “Pandeyji” might be “Daagabaaz” but surely can seat on number 10 position with “Fevicol”.
‘Talaash’ missed the 100 crore mark and even though it is a very thought provoking, serious story, it lacked in entertainment value. However with a different concept, a unique story line, out of the market but very soothing music and of course an ace Khan, meant it got to the number nine slot.
‘Paan Singh Tomar’ is a non-commercial biopic based on real life story of an athlete. It had an amazing and novel concept, something that has not been tried and tested in Bollywood. Credit must be given to Tigmanshu Dhulia for the great idea and to Irfan Khan for portraying the character. However there are many more “sad” moments in the difficult life of Paan Singh rather than happy moments. This makes the movie more dull and sober rather than being joyful and entertaining. Also, being a real story, it’s hard to introduce new twists, turns and funny moments. While not exactly stories of athletes, many other stories of real-life people come to mind. The stories woven around a dacoit- ‘Bandit Queen’ particularly jumps to mind straightaway. So, definitely, this is a concept which is appreciated and it is a good movie to watch. However, the lack of interest to watch it again and again reserves it the spot of number eight.
As far as the soundness of concept is concerned, ‘Vicky Donor’ definitely steals the show. The movie is a complete entertainer, laugh riot and a very original romantic comedy which was brilliantly executed by two newcomers, Ayushmann Khurrana and Yami Gautam. Antakshari (Annu) Kapoor got the role of a lifetime, acting as Dr. Baldev Chaddha, which remains one of the biggest highlights of the movie. The hugely popular song Paani Da Rang was performed by Ayushmaan himself (which also gave him the Filmfare award for Best Singer) and the song titled Rum Whiskey became one of the top chartbusters at clubs. This movie will not only be remembered for its story of a sperm donor but also for portraying the lifestyle of the fun-loving Punjabis, particularly the scene where the mother and mother-in-law are shown drinking together. Perhaps the single drawback of the movie is that it moves very slowly (but brilliantly) in the beginning, giving very less room for the second half and the love angle to grow and develop fully. In my rating, this movie sits comfortably in the number seven spot.
We got another milestone movie of the year when Umesh Shukla touched the untouchable story of a lawsuit on God. If Annu Kapoor and Irfan Khan were brilliant in ‘Vicky Donor’ and ‘Paan Singh Tomar’ respectively, then Paresh Rawal was outstanding in ‘Oh My God’. There is hardly anyone else in the industry right now (perhaps Sanjeev Kumar in 80s could have done it), who could have done justice to the role of Kanjibhai Mehta. A satire on the political, corrupt and blind trust of today’s generation towards God, the concept has been brilliantly exploited. The dialogues and screenplay were outstanding. Mithun Chakraborty also gave a riveting performance as the villain and Akshay Kumar does full justice to a jeans clad ‘God’. The song Mere Nishaan is flawlessly rendered by Kailash Kher. However script was not original, being based on a Gujarati play and an Australian movie. This prevents this movie from going any higher in my list and it will have to settle for the number six position.
So this sums up the movies that ranked 10 to 6 in part one of this blog. Any guesses on which five movies make it to my Top Five? Do let me know.
While some of these movies made it to the Top 10 box office list, not all of them will go on to be actual Top 10 movies. From among all the commercial hits, ‘Dabangg 2’ stands out as a completely entertaining movie in terms of acting, drama, action and very importantly highly trendy and catchy music. So, “Pandeyji” might be “Daagabaaz” but surely can seat on number 10 position with “Fevicol”.
‘Talaash’ missed the 100 crore mark and even though it is a very thought provoking, serious story, it lacked in entertainment value. However with a different concept, a unique story line, out of the market but very soothing music and of course an ace Khan, meant it got to the number nine slot.
‘Paan Singh Tomar’ is a non-commercial biopic based on real life story of an athlete. It had an amazing and novel concept, something that has not been tried and tested in Bollywood. Credit must be given to Tigmanshu Dhulia for the great idea and to Irfan Khan for portraying the character. However there are many more “sad” moments in the difficult life of Paan Singh rather than happy moments. This makes the movie more dull and sober rather than being joyful and entertaining. Also, being a real story, it’s hard to introduce new twists, turns and funny moments. While not exactly stories of athletes, many other stories of real-life people come to mind. The stories woven around a dacoit- ‘Bandit Queen’ particularly jumps to mind straightaway. So, definitely, this is a concept which is appreciated and it is a good movie to watch. However, the lack of interest to watch it again and again reserves it the spot of number eight.
As far as the soundness of concept is concerned, ‘Vicky Donor’ definitely steals the show. The movie is a complete entertainer, laugh riot and a very original romantic comedy which was brilliantly executed by two newcomers, Ayushmann Khurrana and Yami Gautam. Antakshari (Annu) Kapoor got the role of a lifetime, acting as Dr. Baldev Chaddha, which remains one of the biggest highlights of the movie. The hugely popular song Paani Da Rang was performed by Ayushmaan himself (which also gave him the Filmfare award for Best Singer) and the song titled Rum Whiskey became one of the top chartbusters at clubs. This movie will not only be remembered for its story of a sperm donor but also for portraying the lifestyle of the fun-loving Punjabis, particularly the scene where the mother and mother-in-law are shown drinking together. Perhaps the single drawback of the movie is that it moves very slowly (but brilliantly) in the beginning, giving very less room for the second half and the love angle to grow and develop fully. In my rating, this movie sits comfortably in the number seven spot.
We got another milestone movie of the year when Umesh Shukla touched the untouchable story of a lawsuit on God. If Annu Kapoor and Irfan Khan were brilliant in ‘Vicky Donor’ and ‘Paan Singh Tomar’ respectively, then Paresh Rawal was outstanding in ‘Oh My God’. There is hardly anyone else in the industry right now (perhaps Sanjeev Kumar in 80s could have done it), who could have done justice to the role of Kanjibhai Mehta. A satire on the political, corrupt and blind trust of today’s generation towards God, the concept has been brilliantly exploited. The dialogues and screenplay were outstanding. Mithun Chakraborty also gave a riveting performance as the villain and Akshay Kumar does full justice to a jeans clad ‘God’. The song Mere Nishaan is flawlessly rendered by Kailash Kher. However script was not original, being based on a Gujarati play and an Australian movie. This prevents this movie from going any higher in my list and it will have to settle for the number six position.
So this sums up the movies that ranked 10 to 6 in part one of this blog. Any guesses on which five movies make it to my Top Five? Do let me know.
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