In This Week’s Pop-culture Round-up: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3's Audacious Climax And Samay Raina's Hit Game Show
There's a reason Anees Bazmee's film has the edge over Singham Again and why India's Got Latent has millions of views.
The ‘Pop-Culture Digest’ series is a fortnightly catch-up on what’s hot in entertainment.
The climax of filmmaker and screenwriter Anees Bazmee’s films have a separate fan base. They are usually long and ridiculous gags that feature the whole cast. You can head over to YouTube to see the millions of hits on the No Entry (2005) climax that has Salman Khan, Anil Kapoor and Fardeen Khan ad-libbing while hanging off a cliff. My personal favourite is the one from Welcome (2007), in which a gangster (Feroz Khan) takes revenge on all his enemies by forcing them to play a game of passing the parcel.
I’m not sure where the climax of last week’s big Diwali release Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 fits in this list. It has a great twist that I’m sure no one saw coming. But it’s also unexpectedly empathetic, courageous and emotional, which again no one saw coming. Sadly it comes too late in the film and is ruined by tacky purple and red special effects that take away from the moment. But the audacity of the idea gives Bhool Bhulaiyya 3 an edge over Singham Again, the other exhausting Diwali release.
On that note, here’s what happened in pop culture this fortnight.
The Collab We Didn’t Know We Needed
Shreya Ghoshal and Sunidhi Chauhan are the leading powerhouse talents of our music industry who have been at the top of their game since their debut in the late 90s. So it’s rather surprising that until last month no one had thought of getting the women together on an independent music video. Composed by Salim-Sulaiman, ‘Chhaila’ sees Ghoshal and Chauhan sing to each other about being in love. At one point, they break into a rap and it’s truly soul-satisfying to watch their collective mastery on display. Artistic collaborations don’t always have to be about assembling as many superstars as one can afford in one film. We need more of this too.
Things got weird when, a few days later, the composers released another shorter cut of the song with Tiger Shroff, who croons ‘I’m not Chhaila, just a lover’ in a strange accent and thin voice. But it all made sense when viewed through a fun dance reel in which Ghoshal and Chauhan match steps with Shroff and playfully swoon over him. Since everyone is into building a universe of some sort, I’d like to see more bizarre collaborations like this one.
‘India’s Got Latent’
Of the many pointless things I consume on social media, a personal favourite is old clips of hilariously bad auditions on reality shows like India’s Got Talent, MTV Roadies and Indian Idol. I don’t know why I can’t resist them. But I think stand-up comic Samay Raina does, because he’s smartly mined it for his unscripted show India’s Got Latent - a not-so-subtle dig at India’s Got Talent. The show is hosted on Raina’s YouTube channel that has 4 million subscribers. The views on every episode of the show are at least five times that.
India’s Got Latent, which appears to be inspired by the comedy podcast Kill Tony, is fully antithetical to the reality shows on Indian television. For starters, it is R-rated. The production value is deliberately poor. None of the contestants have a tragic backstory and no tears are shed. The contestants are given 90 seconds to display their skills to a live audience and the (predominantly male) panel of judges.
The masterstroke here is the grading system. The contestants have to first score themselves and then compare it to the grade given to them by the judges. This is meant to be an exercise in self-awareness. The person who has the most accurate assessment of his/her skills or the least amount of delusion wins. It’s this clever detail that puts India’s Got Latent a cut above a lot of the other Indian comedy content (mostly podcasts with a bunch of male comics) on the internet.
The Reality TV Crossover We Need
If ever there’s a crossover between unscripted shows, I would like to see the multi-faceted Shalini Passi from Fabulous Lives vs Bollywood Wives be a contestant on India’s Got Latent. The affluent art collector from Delhi is, hands down, one of the greatest discoveries of reality television. Karan Johar correctly tells her, “We must archive you for posterity”. In one of the early episodes we see Passi working with a spiritual psychotherapist to “make her a normal person”, which would be such a shame.
Twice on the show, Passi stuns everyone into silence with her singing talent. When Johar politely labels her a bathroom singer, she says, ‘No way! I’m much better than that’. Passi is also a painter, scuba diver, gymnast and she trains in a new dance form every day of the week. I think her true calling is being an Instagram self-help guru. There’s deep wisdom in all her one-line zingers that we could all benefit from. Find me a better life lesson cum beauty hack than - I don’t hold grudges because it affects my skin.
Where is the Love?
Hindi film producers have often said that there are no takers for romantic comedies anymore. Even Yash Raj Films, the studio that was once synonymous with romance, is focussing on a spy universe.
That said, lately it feels like viewers world over are signalling that they’re starved of a sparkling romance. At this point, they’re clutching at anything they find. A few weeks ago, when actor Andrew Garfield appeared on British creator Amelia Dimoldenberg’s popular YouTube show Chicken Shop Date, fans in the comment section had a meltdown because they sensed genuine chemistry between the two. We had seen a glimpse of it in Garfield and Dimoldenberg’s previous red carpet interactions. But this viral episode spawned serious think pieces on the forgotten joys of old-school flirting and dreamy first dates on screen. Chicken Shop Date is meant to be a gimmicky take on a first date, but Garfield's thoughtful questions on marriage and children made rom-com lovers nostalgic about what they had been missing.
The passionate first kiss in the Netflix show Nobody Wants This (starring Kristen Bell and Adam Brody) had a similar effect on viewers, sending it to the top of the worldwide charts instantly. The unlikely love story of a Jewish Rabbi and a sex podcaster resonated with people because it didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. It gave people what they’ve been craving - a true-blue, cliched rom-com.
Meanwhile, a Pakistani drama called Kabhi Main Kabhi Tum has been trending on YouTube India since its debut three months ago. This too is a simple love story of opposites attract. In the run up to the show’s finale this week, emotionally invested Indian fans started spamming the Pakistani director’s social pages with angry threats to ensure that the lead couple (Hania Amir and Fahadh Mustafa) get a happy ending. Perhaps this is a cue for makers to consider reviving the genre?