Critics, go fly a kite: In a day or two Chennai Express will touch Rs. 200 Crores

It's Advantage Khan, at least for now. Akshay Kumar's much-vaunted Once Upon A Time In Mumbai Dobaara (OUATIMD) has under-performed at the boxoffice, leaving trade experts shell-shocked, and the Chennai Express (CE) producers laughing all the way to the bank.

And the next bank holiday.

Shah Rukh, we hear, plans a big celebration bash. We don't know yet if the OUATIMD producer Ekta Kapoor would be invited. But if reports that she refused to let Shah Rukh screen her film at his residence Mannat are true, then I doubt she would be in a mood to celebrate. Invite or no.

The boxoffice figures for Chennai Express are indeed staggering even in the second week. On its second Friday it collected 6. 50 crore rupees, Saturday's collections were 8. 51 crores, Sunday was 10. 22 crores.

The total over the second weekend was 25. 23 crore rupees. This, when added to the 1st week's collections of Rs 156. 70 cores totalled Rs 181. 93 crores collection for the first ten days.

In a day or two Chennai Express will touch Rs. 200 crores. 

Understandably there is much self-congratulation in the UTV camp. 

Says Gaurav Verma, Director India Theatrical Distribution Studios, Disney UTV Two powerhouses of Bollywood Shah Rukh Khan and Rohit Shetty came together for the first time. That was enough reason to create a huge excitement.

Plus the magic of Deepika Padukone re-teaming with Shah Rukh after six years, backed by the aggressive marketing which created a huge buzz, all this did the trick.

Gaurav also feels the release timing was perfect. With Eid on Friday followed by Independence Day during the same week, the film got an opportunity to go really wide in Week 1. Our gambit paid off. Audiences came to cinemas in huge numbers and made Chennai Express an unprecedented office success. It continues to break many records every day. 

Gaurav gloats over the second week's collections. It is expected to dominate the box office the next week as well. So we'll continue to retain maximum screens in the weeks to come. 
Trade analyst Taran Adarsh endorses the film's whopping success. `The boxoffice business is phenomenal. SRK plus Deepika plus Rohit Shetty plus Eid plus masala have proved yet again that entertainment rules. The masses love Chennai Express. ` Critics can go fly a kite.

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Oops! OUATIMD rakes in only Rs 38 crore in its opening weekend

With a dismal performance, Akshay Kumar's latest release is no match for SRK's 'Chennai Express' which is racing towards Rs 200 crore mark

Ever since its release, Shah Rukh Khan's Chennai Express has bulldozed its way into record books. And looks like Akshay Kumar's latest release Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbai Dobaara has borne the brunt of Rohit Shetty's box office smasher. The SRK-Deepika Padukone starrer became the fastest film to reach Rs 100 crore.

Releasing across limited screens since Chennai Express was still thundering on its way forward on Independence Day (last Thursday), Milan Luthria's film failed to capitalise on the situation once SRK's film finished its first week run.

It collected approximately Rs 11 crore on the opening day but saw a downfall soon after except on Sunday, which saw a slight rise, raking in only Rs 38 crore till Sunday night. SRK's film on the other hand is racing full steam ahead towards the Rs 200 crore mark. 

Trade analyst Amod Mehra says, OUATIMD has failed at the box office. August 15 saw limited shows, which affected the collections. Though the shows increased on Friday, the collections didn't. Saturday was just about okay while Sunday was somewhat better. The film has failed to cross the Rs 50 crore mark over its four days. 

According to distributor Sunny Khanna, Shah Rukh has set a new benchmark of sorts. He explains, `Chennai Express has grossed approximately Rs 147 crore in the first week, adding Rs 23 crore in its second weekend, taking the total BO collection to Rs 170 crore in 11 days. 

The film is gearing up to touch Rs 200 crore in terms of all-India theatrical revenues. Even if it doesn't cross the figure of Rs 200 crore, the producer's share will be higher than all the movies released in the past including Aamir Khan's 3 Idiots. Based on their profit sharing basis, the distributors will have earned better. 
Regarding OUATIMD, Khanna points out that the weekend numbers were way below expectations. On Friday, the film raked in Rs 9 crore, Rs 8 crore on Saturday and Rs 10 crore on Sunday. 

According to distributor and box office expert, Suniel Wadhwa, Akshay's film could do nothing to stop the fast pace of SRK's film.

He says, The film performed very poorly and considering the cost of production as well as print and advertisement cost, Thursday fared better than the rest. With very weak word-of-mouth, the film will be difficult to sustain in the long run.

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Movie Review: Please, no Once Upon A Time In Mumbai... Dobaara

Starring Akshay Kumar, Imran Khan, Sonakshi Sinha

Directed by Milan Luthria

Rating: * *

How do I put this politely? This is arguably one of the most ill-timed gangster drama with most performances so loud and unassimilated that these characters could easily be contestants in a Eid special segment of Comedy Circus where the theme is 'Gangsta Rap' This is done-to-noisy-death gangsterism done with heartbreaking seriousness.

It takes some doing to wrap up such a time-worn love triangle into a pretence of modern storytelling. Milan Luthria's earlier films like Kachche Dhaage and Dirty Picture had some interesting conflicts between characters who are driven by a desire for revenge but are frustrated in their malevolence by their love for the very same people they want to hate. 

The problem with Once Upon A Time In Mumbai Dobaara is that the two main characters who love each other to death, literally, are people we've met over and over again. Most notably in Ram Gopal Varma's Company where Ajay Devgn and Viveik Oberoi played gangster and protege with great conviction and ballsy velocity. 

The subsequent spinoffs have gotten seriously diluted. 

This one is a sequel to Luthria's 2010 film where Ajay Devgn's imposing personality and gravelly voice had made the pale and sometime unintentionally funny proceedings bearable. 
Except for Sonakshi Sinha playing a starlet who talks too hard and too much and gets the male protagonists (who need to be spanked for playing with guns when their IQ level suggests video games would be more apt) into a serious conflict merely because she's too dumb to see they both love her. . . . Dobaara has no redeeming qualities. 

Akshay Kumar as a Dawood doppelgang(st)er is inept, to say the least. His dialogues meant to show his mastery over the hoary art of rhetorics, come out sounding like wimpy words of wacked-out wisdom picked up from messages in Chinese cookies, if not from forwarded sms messages. 
I'd just like to suggest to the dialogue writer Rajat Arora to go easy on the bumper-sticker wisdom next time. You can't make the hero look heroic by spilling tacky wisdom all over the frames in the hope that audiences would applaud the bombastic words without thinking about their relevance. 

This film wallows in a kind of imbecilic irreverence where the protagonists seem bold brave, sexy and even brazen but are actually cardboard versions of the triangular lovers in Raj Kapoor's Sangam and Vinod Kumar's Mere Huzoor. 

But at least love triangles of the past were honest about their melodramatic intentions. Once Upon A Time. . . Dobaara cloaks its outdated radical ideas in a rumbustious display of trendiness. 
Undoubtedly some sections shine brighter than the rest. Aslam (Imran Khan)'s friend making out with his girlfriend in the car while Aslam gives angrezi lessons to Jasmine (Sonakshi Sinha) is a nicely-conceived moment that loses its sheen in repetition. 

One of the 'jokes' that ties Sonakshi's character to her lover-by Imran Khan is his misuse of the word 'intercourse'. The film uses the word (prudishly beeped out by the censorboard) over and over again like a school boy that has just found a non-punishable way to say 'sex' in the classroom. 
A flavour of flagrant criminality is created through back-projected nostalgia. The film opens with an archival cricket match 'fixed' by the all-powerful underworld don. The sequences seems more 'fixed' by the director than the Dubai-based ganglord would have ever imagined. 

Fleets of black and yellow Fiat cars ply up and down Mumbai's roads in a show of periodicity. A wanton woman (Sophie Chowdhary, in a seductive cameo) cheats on her unsuspecting husband, making out with the dreaded don in the backroom at a noisy party. 

You can almost smell the cheap perfume and the discount-rated champagne trying to pass as the genuine stuff in Shoaib's party. This guy thinks he is menacing. He is actually a joke. And if the real Dawood is anything like the way Dawood-like gangster portrayed here by Akshay Kumar, we have nothing to fear except his cheesy dialogue-baazi. 
Where in all this self-defeating noise and activity is theslippery sinisterness on the streets of Mumbai? 

The gangster-villain (Akshay insists he is a villain, and who are we to argue with an overgrown brat of a guy who keeps smashing up furniture and appliances every time he doesn't get his way?) and his cronies appear to have walked out of 'loin' Ajit den in the 1970s, not quite sure which way they are supposed to head in the present-day milieu of such awe-inspiring gangster epics as Luc Besson's Taken and Amit Kumar's Monsoon Shootout. 
This one comes too late. Except for a skillfully-shot train robbery sequence featuring Imran Khan at the start, it has too little to offer in the way action and adventure. 

The stunts appear stunted. Except for Sonakshi Sinha who plays the self-seeking starlet with earnest air-headedness, Pritobash Tripathy who plays Imran's sidekick with misplaced sincerity and Sonali Bhendre who delivers the only truthfully-worded monologue in this verbally-cramped drama, the other performances are all of the watch-me-ham variety. 

And really, what this film has done to the Mohd Rafi Qawwalli Tayyab ali pyar ka dushman would make Manmohan Desai wince if he was alive. 
Dobaaraa done. Please please, no third helping. Otherwise, to rephrase one of Akshay Kumar's favourite dialogues in this film, Agar ek baar dobaara aur kiya toh sequel ka silsila bura maan jayega.

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Parineeti leaves Akki for Sushant Singh Rajput

While Ranveer Singh has happily signed films outside the parent Yashraj banner his costar from Ladies Versus Ricky Bahl Parineeti Chopra seems tied down by a binding contract that doesn't allow her the same freedom. 

One hears Parineeti was very keen to sign on for the Hindi remake of the Tamil blockbuster Thuppakki which she was offered by producer Vipul Shah on behalf of director A. Murugadoss.Apparently Akshay Kumar was also interested in getting her on board for the project as he had seen and liked the new girl on the Bollywood block in Ishaqzaade. However, Yashraj apparently wouldn't release Parineeti to do the outside project. 

Heavy trading of negotiations between the two parties finally culminated in a deadend for Parineeti, with Aditya Chopra apparently vetoeing the very idea of the girl working in an outside film at a time when she was shooting for Yashraj's new film with director Maneesh Sharma opposite Sushant Singh Rajput.
Says a source, Parineeti was ready to shuttle between the two projects without letting either suffer. But she was told in no uncertain terms that she would have to stay committed full-time to Maneesh Sharma's film, just like the film's leading man Sushant Singh Rajput who has not been permitted to do any other project while shooting for the Yashraj film.

Apparently Akshay Kumar also intervened in the hope of some flexibility in Parineeti's schedule. But to no avail. 

It was only after it became crystal-clear that Parineeti wouldn't be able to the Thuppakki remake that Sonakshi Sinha was sounded out, and signed. 
Confirming this director A Murugadoss said, We tried really hard for Parineeti. But she was committed by contract to a project with Yashraj Films.

Curiously Vipul Shah's schedules for the Thuppakki remake don't clash with the Maneesh Sharma film at all. So one wonders why Parineeti had to let go of such a plum project that was bound to take her career further.

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Akshay Kumar crosses 400 crore mark in a calendar year

It has certainly been a good year for Akshay Kumar who is riding high on success with back to back hits at the box office. With his latest Khiladi instalment opening to a good response at the box office, Khiladi Kumar has broken into the 400 crore mark in a calendar year.

The year started well for Akshay Kumar whose Housefull2, Rowdy Rathore and OMG: Oh My God! raking in moolah at the box office.

The big screen had to wait for 12 long years to see Akshay Kumar put on his Khiladi shoes with Khiladi 786. Akshay Kumar who burst into the lime light with Khiladi has come a long way.
Audiences and critics' alike have given thumbs up for the movie and it is running to packed houses in single screen theatres and doing reasonably well in multiplexes. It is no surprise that it is the same franchise which takes him into the 400 crore mark.

Akshay has surely ended the year on a high note and his fans are eagerly waiting to watch Khiladi Kumar in his upcoming films!!

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