GAMES BOLLYWOOD PLAYS
This is not the season for boardroom , casting couch,distribution or marketing games.
This year Bollywood is playing games with lots of balls,biceps and… bearings. We have barely got hold of our bearings after the bumpy rides in Ta Ra Rum Pum and now it is going to rain Football and Hockey. And if this is not enough to bring audiences to their senses the whole Deol family is ready to box them out of their stupor.
John Abraham playing captain of football team , SRK coaching Indian Women’s Hockey team to victory, Dharmendra guiding his sons, especially Sunny Deol, how to use his dhai-kilo-ka-haath in the boxing ring!
So what we lost out on the bid to host 2014 Asian Games? So what our Olympic Association’s dream to host 2020 Olympics seems an utopia? So what commonwealth games being hosted in 2009 are making babus in New Delhi loose their marbles? Going by Bollywood creed everything is hunkydory. The way sports are being made a backdrop for slew of films, it seems we have great sporting culture. Infact it seems we are a great sporting nation.And that too in sports with which we have no cultural connect.
Imagine a country where to drive a normal 1000 cc car without brakes for even 500 metres is a breaking news, we were served Ta Ra Rum Pum with formula racing as its backdrop.One can’t shrug off this issue simply by saying that the movie has been based in Big Apple. It is like serving hamburgers to vada-pav eaters.Audiences could not relate to the movie on many fronts. One of the reasons was its pretensions to offer a formula for success by taking viewers in India .for a ride with the formula racing cars.
And now Indian audiences are going to be cajoled,coerced and even conned to celebrate the euphoria of winning the games in reel life where we have no international standing in real life.Boxing for one. We may have had some presence on Asia level in boxing but to go after heavyweight champions could only be thought of by Bollywoodian brazenness. Few years ago there was Akshay Kumar starrer that had a bizarre bout between Akshay Kumar and WWF champion(I think it was Hulk Hogan–correct me if i am wrong).And Akshay Kumar won! In the soon to be released flick called Apne,the entire Deol clan is going to go on a bashing spree and scream like a banshee to redeem the honor of their own (Apne)
Take football. We can’t even compete decently with Asian teams but the way things will be portrayed in the movie Goal, as i can surmise, would make Diego Maradona think of checking in Indian Medical Facility for his date with destiny! Ok in Hockey we have had our glory under the sun. But that has been mostly in Men’s Hockey. Let’s see how Women’s Hockey team wins in Chak De under the Don-like instructions of SRK and pass some ideas to ex-supercop KPS Gill who presides over Indian Hockey Federation as if he is running a Police Academy.
See there is no harm in projecting sports as a theme for a movie. Some great movies have been made on sports. One of my favorites is Escape To Victory that had real football stars feature in a climax match,notably Pele. Shaolin Soccer is another one. How it has been Indianised or NRIsed in Goal is eagerly awaited. Yes one landmark film coming out of Bollywood stable with sports not only as the backdrop but the crux of the story, is beautifully crafted Lagaan. It is one of those films that also relates to great cricketing culture in our country.
Mostly Bollywood has used sports merely as a prop.Most of the movies coming from yrf and Karan Johar camps has made basketball the favorite game of the protagonist. The way basketball is shown in their films makes one get the impression that India is not only shining but shooting baskets left,right,centre,upwards and downwards also. Now you can’t even string together a full fledged team to compete on a World level in India, where average height of men is around 5′7” approx. And the heroes in our films go dribbling the ball that would make Michael Jordan loose his shirt standing and sheen!He will have to stoop to conquer!
But Bollywood has answer for everything. It defends itself by saying that it makes great visual sense to incorporate such games in the storyline. Moreover it is just fantasy and fictionalised version and has nothing to do with reality. Yes on fantasy level one can agree. And this fantasy of winning a basketball game against superior opposition was very well fictionalised and picturised in Koi Mil Gaya where Jaadu’s supernatural powers came to the rescue.
So does this mean we can only fantasise about the games that have no real base in our sporting culture?And pray for some ET to bail us out. I don’t know. But I want to leave you with a byte from Anil sharma-the director of soon to be released film Apne. When asked why he chose to make a millionth copy of Million Dollar Baby(pun intended) he replied. Look I definitely did not want to make an action film. But I wanted a film that had romance,emotion,comedy,thrill,action,blah,blah,blah…therefore, i chose a sports background. Can you make out what he really means? I can’t. But his chutzpah in giving such a profound sportive gesture deserves cheerleaders. Keep playing-the games.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
It was The Undertaker. I vividly remember that film cos me and my cousin on a bicycle went to the town to catch the film. l-)
And in another Khiladi movie he fought with Women wrestlers.
Shaolin Soccer?! :o
the karate kid series, the mighty ducks series, Gladiator and of course Lagaan are my favorites….
Anyway, here is the wiki’s list of sports film
The best and the most honest attempt made in this genre was “Hip Hip Hurrey”, Prakash Jha’ debute film.. A Jobless Computer Engineer (yes way back in 1979, Rajkiran portrayed a Computer Engineer) who takes up a job of a football coach in a school and finds a team of spoiled brats, disoriented talents and indisciplined students.. Though premises were similar still it was not Vinod Khanna doing “Imtihaan”.. The difference was in execution and ofc the focus was on the game. Nikhil Bhagat as the spoiled leader of the gang was fantastic…
and the theme song was ofc was by gulzar saab
maindaan hai saari zindagi aur khel hai saari umra ka…
haar aur zeet to hoti hai, khel to yaaron khelne do…
I was gonna add HIP HIP HURRAY to this list.
But Pavan you said exactly what i was gonna say. Till this day it remains my fav sports movie.
As a kid this was the 1st film I could relate to.
in indoor game film ‘SATRANJ KE KHILADI’ was a real classic….
Krysh game played by our directors is escapism…shows there stamina for real cinema…
There were some flop films based on cricket like All Rounder, Awal Number, Cricketer.
In “Chamatkar” Shahrukh Khan was a cricket coach and the match of Koi Mil Gaya reminded me of Chamatkar. In Chamatkar the ghost, Naseer, helped them in winning the match and in Koi Mil Gaya it was Jaadoo.
“Boxer” a remake of Rocky was good film based on boxing.
Another forgotten movie is “Ashwini” which was based on the 80’s female athlete, Ashwini Nachappa who was popularly known as ‘India’s FloJo’. She itself acted in the movie as herself.
Nice article…well written!
i like jo jeetha wohi sikandar, it’s cute
“Vo sikandar hi doston kehlaata hai
Haari baazi ko jeetna jise aata hai
Niklenge maidan mein jis din hum jhoomke
Dharti dolegi ye kadam choomke”
and then there is one dev saab’s movie about cricket which shows match fixing and everything..that’s also nice…
and lagaan is the best
thers a naseeruddin shah movie…on hockey…dont know the name…..but a brilliant classic…wonder why none of u mentioned it…..
and….whrs Iqbal guys on ur list
There is this one Smita Patil movie with football at its background. Any of you guys remember it?
thecommutist,
That was Sitam (or Situm for many). the film was started in early 80s and took a long long time to complete.. The film was produced by actor Vikram (Julie fame) and he also acted in the film with Naseer and Smita. Raje’s (Aruna-Vikas) were the directors of the film.. Jagjit-Gulzar provided the songs.. One of the songs from the film is simply one of the best by duo “saans leti huee aankho ko zaraa sone do”.
Story Line was Naseer and Vikram are passionate for Football.. they play club football together.. Naseer dies due to an accident in a game for which Vikram feels guilt.. and he tries to support Smita…
One of the most prominent feature of the film for me was “Tribute to Shammi Kapoor”.. Naseer is shown as a Shammi Kapoor Fanatic (he actually is) and there is a complete medley of songs of shammi Kapoor picturised on him.. Have you seen any other such tribute in a film.. Please share..