Wednesday, August 28, 2013

How is Chennai Express such a big hit?

I went to Chennai Express with the expectations that it is going to be a bad movie -- I was wrong, it was terrible! [Read review here].
I saw Madras Cafe with the expectations that it would be an OK movie -- I was wrong again, it was surprisingly good.
This got me thinking, how is it possible that a movie like Chennai Express is grossing 200 crore+, making history, breaking box office record? Is the audience really that dumb? Or is it the hype and hoopla surrounding that movie? Is it the star power?
Every alternate movie these days claims it has broken box office records and created history. A couple of weeks after its release, everyone forgets about the movie, until you read about the cast and crew having a success bash for 45 days of the film running.
The promotions of CE were sickening crazy. SRK and Deepika were literally everywhere: TV shows, radio shows, malls, fashion shows..you name it. It was so irritating to see SRK repeat dialogues from his previous movies and do the Raj and Rahul kind of stuff he always does.
I hate hate hate stars coming on TV shows to promote their movies. I don't know how, or if ever, this trend would go away. Earlier it was limited to reality shows but now it has extended to daily soaps(Thanks for that, K-ekta Kapoor .. she started it!).
Like, do we really need to see Kareena on CID, or Deepika in Madhubala? Aren't those shows unbearable enough already, that you have to add your cheesy dialogues to those?
We get it. You have a movie releasing soon, you want us to go see it. We will, at our own time and convenience. Stop shoving it in our faces.
I remember when DDLJ was about to release, they aired 'the making of DDLJ' on TV just before its release. It was a first and all of us (us, meaning teenagers) were glued. After that, everyone showed the making of a movie before its release. Don't know when that stopped and this cringe-worthy way of movie promotions started! There was a brief phase when actresses dressed as their on-screen character for promotions..remember Vidya Balan showing up to places as a pregnant lady for Kahani promotions? That was taking it too far.
If promotions really mattered, OUATIMD would have been a hit as well.Those guys went all the way to Dubai royalty promoting their movie. But it sank without a trace.
On the other hand, there is Madras Cafe which did not have such incessant promotions, and although it is a well made movie with a good script, it is struggling to make a mark. 
Maybe its the producer/director who decide what lengths they want to go to.. Rohit Shetty is a pro when it comes to market his films.. while Shoojit Sircar, the director of Madras Cafe, seems like a person who believes that if a movie is good, it will work, with or without promotions. His last film,Vicky Donor, was a surprise hit as well.
I hope Madras Cafe does well, for the sake of Bollywood, because if movies like CE, Golmaal, Ready keep breaking records to make history, good cinema from Bollywood would soon become history.

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