Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor in a still from ‘Singham Again’.
Another day, another underwhelming Bollywood remake of a Tamil/Telugu/Malayalam film. This was the same sentiment towards the end of last month’s media show for the Varun Dhawan-starrer ‘Baby John’, directed by Karish. The film is the official Hindi remake of the 2016 Tamil action thriller ‘Theri’, starring Vijay and directed by hit merchant Atlee (who produced Baby John).
In the movie, super cop Satya Verma (Dhawan) fakes his own death and kills himself ( John D’Silva) and his young daughter. His wife and mother were in ambush. When his daughter’s teacher Tara (Wamika Gabi) tries to speak Malayalam to John, John says he doesn’t understand the language. Shortly after, John is confronted by someone who knows him as Sathya, and starts speaking stilted Malayalam, surprising Tara and alerting her to the fact that something is wrong here.
Varun Dhawan stars in Baby John, the Hindi remake of the 2016 Tamil action thriller Teri, starring Vijay.
The Hindi-speaking hero, suffering an identity crisis, chooses to impersonate (however poorly) a native Malayali. I can think of few moments that better encapsulate Bollywood’s ongoing creative crisis.
In the last four to five years, Bollywood has increased its reliance on Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam films. All the major stars are remaking films from these industries, and the results in Hindi range from middling (Ajay Devgn’s Bholaa, Lokesh Kanagaraj’s remake of the Tamil film Kaithi) to downright terrible. (Baaghi 3, which is based on N. Ringuswamy’s Bettai). The odd notable exception, like the Vikram Veda of Pushkar and Gayathri, is their refinement. The already polished Tamil film of the same name. Some of the recent blockbusters in Bollywood have been written by Tamil and Telugu writers, such as Atlee’s Jawan and Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal. Since Bollywood doesn’t even trust its own creators to make commercially successful duplicate films, directors from these industries are increasingly being invited to remake their films in Hindi. For example, Kannada film director A. Harsha has been announced as the director of Tiger Shroff’s upcoming film Baaghi 4.
(L-R) Actor Vijay Sethupati, director Atlee and actor Shah Rukh Khan at the promotion of the film ‘Jawan’ in Mumbai, September 2023. Photo credit: Getty Images
Local stars do good PR
The commercial/marketing implications of this phenomenon are significant. One visible development is that these days, almost all big-budget films, regardless of industry, feature “mixed” casts.
We have representatives from a variety of industries from North to South. It is considered easy to promote a film with a “local” face. To name just two recent examples, Baby John stars South star Keerthy Suresh as one of the female leads in the film, while the recent Rajinikanth action thriller Vettaiyaan stars Amitabh Bachchan plays an important role. Rajini’s next film Coolie features cameo appearances by Nagarjuna (Telugu), Aamir Khan (Hindi) and Upendra (Kannada). Kannada actor Yash of KGF fame has been roped in to play the role of Ravan in Nitesh Tiwari’s Hindi film Ramayana, while Ranbir Kapoor and Sai Pallavi will play Rama and Sita respectively.
Stills from the Tamil action thriller film ‘Vettaiyan’.
And this is not the only way the nature of Hindi blockbusters is changing. Action parts in Bollywood are starting to resemble the kind of scenes you see in Prabhas and Yash movies. While the camera has an aneurysm, cartoonishly burly men dispatch a swarm of assailants, unfolding in dozens of high-speed cuts over the course of a minute or two. The rapid-fire, over-the-top editing style doesn’t allow the scenes any room to breathe or even effectively convey things like the emotional stakes of the battle. The hero barely raises his fist, and the villains fly through the air in an outward circle.
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The third big change is Hairy Persuasion. Bollywood heroes, like Arul Arjun in Pushpa and Yash in KGF, grow big, shaggy beards like dogs. In the latest big-budget Bollywood film, Singham Again, the villain ‘Danger Lanka’ (Arjun Kapoor) is clearly modeled on a combination of characters from famous Tamil and Telugu films. are. He has a beard so big and thick that it looks like a bird will fly out of it while he’s taking a break. The character Sangram, played by Ranveer Singh (with a handsome military mustache), even says the following when he first sees his enemy: Ekdum South Indian Hero Maafik (What a killer face, dangerous, you look just like a South Indian hero).”
Ranbir Kapoor in “Animal”.
once had a beard
Now, I am mindful of the fact that whiskers, like all visual markers, can be informed by cultural osmosis. Still, the current one-size-fits-all approach of Bollywood must be protested. Under the tutelage of Sandeep Reddy Vanga, first Shahid Kapoor and then Ranbir Kapoor buried their faces under a layer of Amazonian lip moss. They are now the “Heroes of Southern Africa” both visually and spiritually.
Also read: Shock therapy in Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s ‘Animal’
So no matter how many times Dhawan copies some of Vijay’s signature mannerisms (stylized wearing of bracelets, cocaine-fueled tap-dance choreography) in Baby John, I find the illusion that I didn’t “purchase” it. Bollywood can repeat this gamble over and over again, but it’s a cynical performance guided more by box office pressure than anything else. Even a good imitation requires a core of unconditional love for it to really work.
The author and journalist is working on her first nonfiction book.
issued – January 3, 2025 3:23pm IST
