And the Award goes to…

In the recent past, we have had a spate of filmy award functions that claim to celebrate and honour the best of Hindi cinema. While all of them seem shameless rehashes of each other, with the same winners, victory speeches, spoofs, jokes, idle banter and even dance performances, you can hardly blame them. ORIGINALITY is a redundant word in the Bollywood dictionary. Once you accept that, it is easy to see why our films are not going anywhere when it comes to scaling new heights of creativity. All you have is a rehash of English, regional and when in doubt, old Hindi films themselves. But this post is not meant to be a cynical take on our films. It is an extremely subjective defining of the flawed intricacies of the art of making cinematic drudgery. Does that sound like cynicism to you? Yes? Well then it must be. And I might as well stop being polite in that case.

Considering the trash that is getting thrown up at us, we as a nation are in danger of being declared mentally inane when it comes to our cinematic sensibilities. We don’t seem to understand the difference between good and bad cinema, oh wait- sane and juvenile cinema. And so quite a few filmmakers have taken it on themselves to make the most of it. Their masterpieces are not only raking in the moolah at the box office but also wrapping in all the accolades and awards at every fancy awards night, all based on popular demand.

But wait! Wasn’t popular demand supposed to be all about we, the people? So aren’t we the guys to be applauded for the efforts we take in lapping up the above mentioned genre of insipid films that are coming our way? Pardon me for sounding ungrateful but no one seems to be noticing that we are the ones who actually deserve the awards for declaring such nincompoops our star entertainers. Something tells me though that such a turn of events may not be possible in the distant future. Nevertheless, these are films that would definitely qualify as my pick for the ‘Real People’s Choice Awards’:
 
‘I find solace in a room full of idiots Award’: Housefull 2- In the nature of the current trends, this film also came as a sequel to the very hare brained Housefull. The key to such films is to fill them up with a motley bunch of a few major and many minor stars and starlets so that amidst the cacophony you are anyway not going to miss the absence of a plot, story, characterization and common sense. Remember the backbencher in class who used to laugh at your PJs simply because everyone else was? Yeah, he qualifies!

‘Forgive & Forget Award’: Joker- The people who went for this film are saints, priests, maulvis, sadhus, rishis, munis and the Pope apart from God Almighty Himself. You see, someone has to rise up to the occasion and pardon the otherwise negligible flaw that is Shirish Kunder. Oops, I meant his every attempt at filmmaking. Just for the record, these very selfless souls also watched Tees Maar Khan.

‘The Starry Eyed Fan Award’: Ek Tha Tiger- This was Salman Khan’s take on Agent Vinod. So then why did it do such good business you ask? Because this was Salman Khan’s take on Agent Vinod. This award meanwhile goes to fans who can watch their favourite superstar on screen time and again, doing the same thing and idolize him for exactly that, time after time!

‘Har Friday Meri Marlow Award’: Kya SuperKool Hain Hum- You see this film inspired the perverse nature of this award but nothing could suit this film more aptly so cut me some slack if you find the language a tad offensive. It would do the makers and fans of this film proud, trust me.

‘Mocktail Award’: Cocktail- This film made a mockery out of every Archies concept ever mentioned on a greeting card- love, friendship, understanding, companionship, togetherness and even something they never mentioned on the cards- physical intimacy. It gave a whole new dimension of mockery to the term ‘Awesome Threesome’.

‘The Soft Porn, Bring it On Award’: Jism 2- The Award title is self explanatory. The fans who watched this film were unable to collect this award as they are busy pouring over a list of adult  actors for the next edition of this series so that they can dash it off to the Bhatts before they release Jism 3.

‘Southern Spice is Nice Award’: Rowdy Rathore- This award is dedicated to fans who lick everything in the name of a remake of any superhit film from down south. It’s probably the spicy whiff of sambhar & rasam which does it for such films. There is no other reason why we must take the clumsy Hindi versions of perfectly fine Tamil, Malayalam or Kannada films.

‘The Bolti Band Award’: Bol Bachchan- Well obviously a film like this would have left you speechless right? The comic histrionics of Abhishek Bachchan and company with a dead pan Ajay Devgn making mince pie of the Queen’s language…suddenly I am out of words myself.