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Honey’s Armaan falls flat
Komal Nahta
May 24
Bigger Picture
Three directors made their debuts last week but, unfortunately, none of the debutants’ films made any mark at the box-office. Writer Honey Irani turned director with Dinesh Gandhi’s Armaan but all that the film managed to do was to land itself in the ICU! After a shaky start, the Bachchan-Anil-Preity-Gracy starrer only went downhill as the week progressed.
Collections in non-multiplexes were so dull that it could give co-writer and ex-husband Javed Akhtar a complex. For, it is after years that Javed returned to screenplay-writing with Armaan. He was expecting the film to do wonders at the box-office. But what it turned out to be was not a box-office wonder but rather a box-office blunder.
Actually, Javed had been assigned the task of penning the songs and dialogue for the debut film of his ex-wife. But as they interacted for the film, he ended up giving his inputs to Honey’s screenplay too, because of which she gave him the joint credit for it. But not even names like Amitabh, Anil and Preity could lure the audiences to the cinemas in the remake of the old hit, Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai.
The public found it too similar to the ongoing television serial, Sanjeevani. The 18-crore project (without accounting for the notional interest because Gandhi is among the few producers who doesn’t borrow money to make films) will push Gandhi behind by at least Rs eight crore! What was sad was that despite top stars, the film didn’t elicit response from distributors. Resultantly, Gandhi had to release the film himself in most of the circuits. And to think of it, he paid Bachchan about Rs 2.5 and Anil, Rs 2 as their remunerations. Neither could they entice the paying public nor could they seduce distributors to buy the rights.
Jimmy gets another duck
Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Haasil was a complete non-starter. Collections were as low as 10 per cent and 15 per cent of the capacities. Although it was granted tax-exemption in UP, the tax-free tag didn’t help except, perhaps, in a couple of cities like Allahabad, may be because the college campus story is set in Allahabad. Unlike Honey Irani’s direction, Dhulia’s narrative style has come in for praise but that’s about all. Going by the grosses of the film, it is a total loss. Neither Irfan Khan’s brilliant performance nor the hard-hitting scenes could see the film through. Lack of proper promotion, music that didn’t become popular, a cold title and lack of face value (despite a good performance by Jimmy), all this went against the film.
Raveena loses face
Raveena Tandon had better retire from film production if she is to salvage her floundering acting career. For, while she may be losing out on acting assignments because of being busy with production, the new activity itself won’t take her anywhere if Stumped is the kind of films she believes in. Opening to empty stadia, sorry, auditoria, this film about cricket and war was a waste of money. Poorly written by debutant Gaurab Pandey and even more poorly directed by him, the satirical film could open in only Mumbai and South last week. The losses of Stumped must be giving sleepless nights to Raveena.
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