My angry rather furious is the correct term, sister-in-law from New York lambasted in a video-call, "no more Bollywood films for me. What was Aamir smoking when he made LSC, and why on earth did the producers of a cult film Forrest Gump, let the Hindi adaptation to be reduced to such a zilch."
The words of my sister-in-law rankled me, days after her call. The anger over the shoddy way Lal Singh Chaddha is handled by the famed Mr. Perfectionist, Aamir Khan, is all over, but what went wrong. I mulled and decided to do, what I do the best, write.
To start with LSC was touted as the big-ticket spectacle, after all, it was the adaptation of Forrest Gump; but adaptation needs plausibility and logic, hallmark of Aamir starrers so far, yet here a good chunk of the movie is about Lal joining the Indian army, it is a big failing not only of the writer or director but Mr. Perfectionist too; because in US it was a historic event during the Vietnam war of recruiting 'differently-abled' people in the army, India has no such instance. When you commit such a big blunder on the script-level it is highly unlikely that the film will find an audience.
Agreed, there are moments that make you emotional, but this aspect is present in almost 50% of the films, yet the success rate of films is a paltry 9%; you definitely need much more than few emotions to make an 'event' film.
The film fails to live up to the expectations that it carried, mostly
because of dramatized scenes and over exaggeration, resulting in an
underwhelming movie. Aamir's most anticipated movie
is butchered by his fake Punjabi dialect which gets pretty annoying
after a few scenes. With his wide eyed expressions and his constant
Hmm's, the audience tends to get aggravated with his mediocre acting.
In spite of the storyline being heartfelt - we have Academy Award winner Forrest Gump - as the foundation; LSC can't bear the burden of it's own screenplay drag.
The biggest flaw of the film is the relationship of Lal with his mother is so superficial that it fails to hit any sort of connect with the audiences.
After five days of no show, as per reports (screenshot attached) the producers claimed in print late Monday evening that LSC hasn't lost any money; but then almost all producers claim that their film hasn't lost any money.
Coming to the whole story of adaptation, it was a simple commercial
proposal. Viacom thought to test waters with it's Hollywood masterpiece,
Forrest Gump; if the film worked they had a whole plethora of library
to adapt for the Indian market. They got Mr. Perfectionist to top-line
it, but.. !
The manager of a leading multiplex chain on condition of anonymity said, "Few people are saying film is a disaster because of boycott. It is not true. The fact is, the film is very boring and very long. Earlier Thugs of Hindostan too fell after a historic first day! At the end of the day, the film has to have meat to sustain, else no matter who is in the cast, the film will flop".
Talking about the box-office collections compared to another festive release Raksha Bandhan that also under-performed, one of the leading distributors of Delhi-UP, Rakesh Jain said, "the 5-day gap is around 7 to 8 crores, but the average occupancy of Raksha Bandhan is better by around 20% to 25%." Echoing the statement, Nitin Agarwal, an exhibitor stated, "reason for more BO collection of LSC is the reported fact that LSC has around 2000 to 2200 shows more than Raksha Bandhan all over India".
Written by: Goutami Ganachari with industry inputs by Amit KumaR Agarwal