The orders have been placed for gluttonous tubs of cheese
popcorn and watered-down Coke. Muscle-or mostly, flab-bound men abound in
T-shirts that seem two sizes too small. Going around, there are also plenty of
mohawked and spiked hairstyles,tattooed arms and
low-rise jeans that seem two sizes too large. Add to that the gadget paraphernalia,
namely theBlackBerrys and the
iPhones, a couple of which will unfailingly ring during the movie.
We’re here to watch Salman Khan’s long-lost brother in Hollywood, the
formidably named Vin Diesel, kick ass, talk tough and do some mean-ass driving
through Rio on rides we can’t afford (or, even if we could, can't buy in India…
yet). When Fast Five was released last week, Mumbai flocked to
the biggest screen in town (the iMax at Wadala) to watch some ‘English cinema’.
If you haven’t had the time, or are too much of an I-watch-world-cinema
snob to see such commercial fare, you've missed out on a small
phenomenon of sorts. Fast Five was the second most popular
film of the week, ahead of a few Bollywood offerings, preceded only by a
certain indigenous horror film called Haunted. Trade figures will
tell you that Fast Five and its Hindi-dubbed version raked in
a combined Rs. 9 crores in its opening week.
The late night show I attended at iMax last week had a capacity crowd. I
haven’t seen a Hollywood film attract that level of following since James
Cameron’s Avatar. That, too, did so well that they’re
still running eight-minutes-of-head-hurting-3D-added ‘special’ shows. Who
knows, Cameron might just go down as the man who gave some competition to Shah
Rukh Khan’s DDLJ run at Maratha Mandir.
So between the masses that flock to the box office when a Salman Khan film
like Wanted releases (there’s another one coming, Ready, and
you can bet on that one being a hit too), and the handful of intellectual
filmgoers who drop names like Wong-Kar Wai and Lars von Trier, who is the
audience for mainstream Hollywood films in India?
The 500-strong crowd I watched (and thoroughly enjoyed) Fast Five with
mostly consisted of school- and college-going boys. There was also the young IT
and corporate crowd, with IDs still clipped to their formal-trouser pockets and
heavy laptop bags parked in front of their seats. Understandably, it's a mostly
male audience. The few girls there look like they’d rather be BBMing their
girlfriends (if they weren't already), making shopping plans for the weekend
ahead. The guys they're accompanying know that they'll have to pay for the
favour by watching Sex and the City 3 andTwilight.
But as with the slapstick-y Golmaal series
and
Sunny Deol movies, it's it’s formula that draw the masses - and that's
just as true for Hollywood. Give us something that moves fast, puts up a good
fight, occasionally blows up or makes us laugh out loud and we’re as good as
kids at a candy store. Fast Five won’t win an Oscar anytime
soon, but we will keep watching more ‘English cinema’ and whistling every time
Diesel breaks the law.
- Sarit Ray
20 May, 2011
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