Audience versus Critics

A few days back something caught my eyes; a well-known trade analyst of Bollywood posted the BO figures of ‘Rustom’. This one is almost touching 200 crore collection now. And the other one ‘Akira’, which released last Friday is touching almost 30 crore – if we add its overseas collections.

This reinstated my belief in a simple fact that audience is a far better judge of quality movies; than a purist highbrow critic who sits in his legendary armchair and delivers a verdict on hard work and sincere efforts of a committed team of directors, actors, musicians, technicians, etc to bring entertainment to us.

The worse thing a critic or a purist or whatever is your term for cinema content judges repeatedly do is bringing their own biases and prejudices of actors and cinema when judging a new release. ‘Rustom’ was judged with so much venom and holier than thou attitude that it could put the most well-polished propagandist to shame. There were memes of Akshay Kumar’s uniform inaccuracies; I personally liked some of those jokes.

But the average critic forgets a simple point. The audience walks in to get goose bumps, not facts. They are there for entertainment not epilogues of facts. So we all know that no man can pluck out a hand pump out of the ground with bare hands and yet we rejoice when Sunny Deol does it in a ‘Gadar’.

We know that no man can fly from roof top to another roof top and yet we enjoy the ‘Dabangg’ fight scenes when Chulbul Pandey runs into goons and bashes them all over the city house roofs. Audiences look for emotional enrichment and they don’t care if the director reads a Ruskin Bond daily or Manohar Kahaniyan!

The other example is ‘Akira’. The purists and lobby-driven critic brigade had written a barrage of reviews, which ripped this one apart. If the reviewers were to have their way - except for the guy who switches on the projector and the usher, no one else should have walked in to see the film.

Yet on day 6 ‘Akira’ proved that it is a profitable venture for its makers. The movie worked on its different content, a very sincere acting of the trio of Sonakshi, Anurag and Konkana. ‘Akira’s success is also a big indicator of the audience ‘s common sense because this movie has no relief to offer in terms of item songs or comedy. It just keeps up the grim brooding pace all the time.

The same critic brigade that went hammers and tongs at Sonakshi for her previous masala heroine roles are now ripping the screen character of ‘Akira’ apart. There is every chance that Sonakshi will still do the ‘Dabangg’ type of roles. And she should! At the cost of irritating the purist brigade, this lady is phenomenal in her glamour avatars.

My bone to pick with the purist battalion is that when the lady did attempt something different and content-based we did not exactly give her the fair due she so richly deserved. Otherwise, can anyone tell me when did we last have an actress who delivered so much just from her gaze?

That brings me to the attitude of the rigid Bollywood critic brigade that totally ignore the actor and the director trying to attempt something different, and therefore the resulting surprise when such movies work at the BO. The fact is they work with huge numbers and audience appreciation.

Chances are that after the BO success of the films, an average critic will tell you that ‘Akira’ and ‘Rustom’ have worked because the audience looks for just masala and they don’t care for quality. Not for one moment will they realise that the audience looks for entertainment not accuracy of uniforms.

I thank the almighty that the directors do not care about critics else Ramesh Sippy would have made a docudrama on the “dakoos” of Chambal and not ‘Sholay’!

By: Rahul Deo Bharadwaj