One of Aamir Khan’s most ambitious movies yet was ‘Laal Singh Chaddha‘, the Indian adaptation of Tom Hank’s cult movie ‘Forrest Gump’. While the movie flunked in theatres, it has now got a new lease of life upon its release on Netflix. Twitter now asks a valid question: Were we too quick to dismiss the movie due to the prevalent conditions then?
Despite everything, viewers cannot deny that ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’ seemed like a genuine effort to get a good adaptation rooted in India. That is very rare in India now, where most films are made as projects after calculating the pre-release business instead of the genuine desire to create good cinema. After its Netflix release, it feels good that the movie is finally getting its due. People are loving the film and wonder why such a good film flopped in theatres.
One of the big praises coming from the viewers is towards Kareena Kapoor Khan’s character Roop. Many felt more emotionally invested in Roop’s character than her counterpart in ‘Forrest Gump’. Kareena gave a praiseworthy performance and the character receiving so much love shows the makers were successful in their localization of the American story. The child artists are also being praised, along with the spellbinding performances of Mona Singh as Laal’s mother.
While the movie was not without flaws, we could have easily looked past them to see the beautiful moments, especially toward the end. The moments between Laal and his son were easily some of the best ones. The reception received goes on to prove the time-old fact that good movies always get their due. It’s only a matter of time when.
The Viacom18 produced movie was a big financial failure, so much so that the film which was initially supposed to be released on Viacom’s own OTT platform VOOT after 6 months ended up being released on Netflix after 55 days, understandably to reduce the losses, something Aamir Khan has time and again said he won’t do encourage.
The movie was reportedly review bombed by people irrespective of whether they had seen the movie. While this is done in height of sentiment, the loser in all this is the audience who wants good cinema. This is when people are to be reminded of the distinction between art and the artist. With other films also bearing this grunt, viewers don’t realize it is actually drawing us back. It’s drawing good cinema back. Isn’t now a good time for us as audience to retrospect? The alternative is us getting two sex comedies and horror comedies every month, and a few 2-hour debacles in the name of mass cinema.
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