Movie Magic
It was one of the best years for Bollywood as movie after movie scored at the box office. Deepa Gahlot picks the top five movies of 2006.
Dhoom 2
Director: Sanjay Gadhvi
Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Aishwarya Rai, Abhishek Bachchan, Bipasha Basu, Uday Chopra and others
Music: Pritam
Sanjay Gadhvi’s sequel to his Dhoom was bigger, though not necessarily better.
Hrithik Roshan plays Aryan, the `perfect thief’, in this caper, with cops Abhishek, Uday and Bipasha following his audacious heists all over the world. Then Sunehri (Aishwarya Rai) pleads with Aryan to take her as his partner, and love almost turns out to be his undoing. Plot is not a strong point of this film. But the extravagantly mounted stunt sequences in exotic places (Brazil, Namibia) are, as well as Hrithik Roshan’s elaborate disguises. That the film, with its rocking music, would be a hit was a foregone conclusion.
Krrish
Director: Rakesh Roshan
Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Priyanka Chopa, Rekha, Naseeruddin Shah and others
Music: Rajesh Roshan
Rakesh Roshan risked a sequel to his sci-fi adventure Koi Mil Gaya and hit box-office bull’s eye again.
In Koi Mil Gaya, the mentally challenged Hrithik Roshan meets an alien and acquires superhuman intelligence. Now his son, also played by Hrithik Roshan, has inherited those superman qualities, as a result of which his grandmother (Rekha) hides him away in a remote hill station. There he meets TV reporter Priyanka Chopra, falls in love, follows her to Singapore, where he wears a mask and becomes superhero Krrish. Villain Naseeruddin Shah is about to create a computer that will give him control over the world, and Krrish has to save the day. Spectacular action and Hrithik Roshan turned this film into a hit.
Lage Raho Munnabhai
Director: Raj Kumar Hirani
Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Arshad Warsi, Vidya Balan, Dilip Prabhawalkar, Boman Irani
Music: Shatanu Moitra
Raj Kumar Hirani’s delightful sequel to Munnabhai MBBS turned out to be a huge critical and commercial hit.
In the earlier version, Munnabhai pretends to be a doctor and takes over a medical college with his loyal sidekick Circuit. This time, Munna pretends to be a history professor to impress his lady love (Vidya Balan). To his amazement, Mahatma Gandhi (Dilip Prabhawalkar) himself turns up to coach him in ‘Gandhigiri’ and the petty thug becomes a messenger of peace and non-violence, saving an old people’s home from a greedy builder (Boman Irani) and starting a social movement. All this was done with a high degree of warmth and wit, leading to box-office success.
Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna
Director: Karan Johar
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Rani Mukerji, Preity Zinta
Music: Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy
Karan Johar grows up and tackles marital discord in his third film.
Shah Rukh Khan plays a failed footballer, disabled in an accident and resentful of his wife’s (Preity Zinta) successful career. Rani Mukerji plays the disgruntled wife of a happy-go-lucky Abhishek Bachchan. The two unhappy people meet, fall in love and have the courage to break up their marriages. Amitabh Bachchan does a cameo as Abhishek’s randy father. The stylish film with a cast like that and hit music was bound to open well. It did very well abroad, but not so good in India, where audiences could not accept Shah Rukh Khan as a loser and disapproved of two divorces.
Rang De Basanti
Director: Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra
Cast: Aamir Khan, Alice Patten, Kunal Kapoor, Sharman Joshi, Atul Kulkarni, Siddharth, Madhavan, Soha Ali Khan
Music: A R Rahman
Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s film about youthful revolt was a bigger box-office success than his Aks.
British girl Alice Patten leans Hindi and comes to India to make a documentary on freedom fighter Bhagat Singh and his associates. When casting, she comes across a merry bunch of good-for-nothings (Aamir Khan, Kunal Kapoor, Siddharth, Sharman Joshi), whiling away their time after college. She then signs them up to play the great revolutionaries. Their spirit is charged for protest when their pilot buddy (Madhavan) is killed due to a faulty plane, and he is blamed for being a bad pilot. When all protest fails, the boys kill the corrupt defence minister and go down in a blaze of glory. The film appealed to young people who found their own apathy to social causes mirrored in the film’s characters.