With the jadoo long gone from the jhappi, Rajkumar Hirani movies now feel more like the suffocating hug of an uncle who holds on too long.
The first time the trailers for Munna Bhai MBBS came out, everyone collectively rolled their eyes. Another Sanjay Dutt starrer in which he plays a gangster. The year was 2003 and just about everyone and their mother had had enough of Bhai, having seen him in movie after after movie after movie regurgitating the same dialogue. The Khalnayak and Vaastav magic was starting to wear out. Films like Hathyar, Kaante, Plan, Hum Kisise Kum Nahi etc helped convince audiences to stay away from another Sanjay Dutt gangster movie by an unknown new director, who’s biggest claim to fame was being a protege of Vidhu Vinod Chopra.
Even the trailers didn’t do the movie any favors. Sanjay Dutt is a local thug who wants to enroll in a medical college. The teaser showed him getting a picture taken with his batchmates. In hindsight, we can see the funny side in it, but up until 2003, the world hadn’t received a jadoo ki jhappi. That was all about to change.
As expected, Munna Bhai MBBS opened to empty theatres as people mostly stayed away. It was the make-or-break moment for the new director, and if word-of-mouth reviews of the movie hadn’t spread to eventually turn Munna Bhai MBBS into the cult classic it became, the landscape of Bollywood would have been very different. Talking about that time, Vidhu Vinod Chopra had this to say while talking to Bollywood Hungama.
“Munna Bhai MBBS opened to empty theatres. Raju (Rajkumar Hirani) was very upset thinking I lost a lot of money. At that time, I told Raju, here is a little money, about Rs 11,000. He said, ‘I will take nothing.’ I was like, ‘This is for the next film, make one more. It’s a great film.’ At that time, we had about Rs 4 crore. I was like, make another film. I didn’t care if Munna Bhai worked or not. Although the film started to pick up pace after Monday, the seats were empty during the weekends. I didn’t really wait for the film to become a success for me to make another film.”
New Heights
Chopra’s belief in Hirani’s capabilities proved prescient, and armed with the critical and commercial success of Munna Bhai MBBS, Hirani did something almost unheard of at the time: a sequel. While Bollywood has a rich history of ripping off entire movies from Hollywood, one road the industry hadn’t yet gone down was of movie franchises. If it had, they’d seen the low margins of success such a venture brought. Paradoxically, for a culture that believed in reincarnations and multiple lives, Bollywood heroes rode off into the sunset with their heroines, never to return again.
But Rajkumar Hirani was a different brand of filmmaker who seemed to know how to land a poignant and deep point in a way that made audiences chuckle and nod. Plus, he now had the wind at his back, having revived the careers of Sanjay Dutt and Arshad Warsi and launched Boman Irani. He used the trio in a totally original idea in Lage Raho Munna Bhai.
The name for the sequel went through many iterations, such as Munna Bhai 2nd Innings and Munna Bhai Meets Mahatma Gandhi, until eventually settling on Lage Raho Munna Bhai, hinting at the attention to detail and getting things just right that early-career phase Hirani was famous for. Even during the screenplay writing, Hirani aimed to avoid repetitiveness, landing fresh jokes that weren’t cringey or loud. He acknowledged that significant theme of the sequel was to rekindle interest in Mahatma Gandhi, highlighting general ignorance about him through anecdotes, such as his talk with a chai-wallah who knew nothing about Gandhi.
This was peak Hirani, working on the screenplay with Abhijat Joshi, who researched Gandhi extensively. Their creative process involved detailed discussions and walks until they perfected their scenes. The sequel was better resourced than the first film, staying within budget and filming primarily around Mumbai with some scenes in Goa. The movie opened to packed theatres and turned out to be a bigger success than the first one. It seemed that Hirani had cracked the code and the curse of the sequel was broken.
Source Material: Hirani’s Secret Sauce
Here was a filmmaker who could broach deep subject matter and get away with topics that hadn’t entered mainstream Bollywood in a long time. There was a calm confidence and conviction in his direction, which showed in the end result. It was as if he was saying to the audience that I know the story or scene is funny; I don’t have to pander to you with loud background music and gags. And the audience responded. His style of films wasn’t formulaic; it was more subtle and layered. People started remembering characters more than the story itself. Phrases and dialogues became part of common conversation.
With 3 Idiots, Hirani had perfected his art. Step one was to latch on to a great story, in this case a blockbuster book. Step two was to get the right big-name actors for the roles, which wasn’t a problem since everyone was already a fan. And then, he had the eye to add backstory and nuance to the script, something that others either couldn’t do or weren’t interested in doing.
Also Read: The Power of Three in Bollywood Friendship Movies
However, in retrospect, 3 Idiots also set in motion the beginning of the downward trajectory of Hirani’s movies. Set in an engineering college, the movie faced challenges as Hirani’s signature style of wholesome humor didn’t completely fit the setting. Despite these issues, the strong performances of the cast and Hirani’s precise direction managed to hold the film together, though the result felt somewhat mechanical and less engaging, hinting at Hirani’s style becoming somewhat predictable.
The Background Noise Drowns Out the Story
There’s a saying that there are only two types of stories in the world — a person going on a journey or a stranger arriving in town. This seemed especially true with the next Rajkumar Hirani venture, PK. The film was criticized for its excessive melodrama and overacting, with Hirani seemingly opting for the tried-and-true approach more and more. It was the classic case of going to the well so often that finally, the water that had hitherto replenished his movies seemed to have run dry.
His musical compositions also began to echo this redundancy, often just setting common idioms to music, lacking originality. Songs like Behti Hawa Sa Tha Woh, Jaane Nahi Denge Tujhe, Bhagwan Hai Kaha Re Tu, Kar Har Maidan Fateh, Nikle The Kabhi Hum Ghar Se, and Main Tera Rasta Dekhunga exemplify this pattern. While good, they weren’t instant classics, relying more on the pedigree of the filmmaker rather than their own quality to remain popular.
Furthermore, Hirani’s reliance on crude humor escalated with each movie, from a scene focusing on a spit in PK to more offensive scenes involving explicit content in Sanju and Dunki. Such moments seemed out of place in Hirani’s films, which traditionally didn’t rely on shock value, a tactic more expected in films by directors like Anurag Kashyap, who typically eschews such overt sensationalism.
The Magic is Gone
Going by numbers alone, Sanju was Hirani’s biggest blockbuster. But that’s about it. It’s not about numbers, which, as most of us now know, can be manipulated. True cinema and the kind of movies that Hirani had started out making were movies based on important topics and serious themes. In that aspect, Sanju was nothing more than a PR piece and a whitewashing operation that perhaps only Manyata or Sanjay Dutt himself would’ve been pleased with.
It was Rajkumar Hirani’s first foray into biopics and it showed as he obliterated facts and played havoc with history in his attempt to portray a very politically correct but false version of history. Apart from the visual aspect of the movie, nothing clicked. Even Ranbir Kapoor, who did a commendable job of looking the part of Sanjay, was considered overly dramatic, as the director and actor appeared to focus more on enhancing Sanjay Dutt’s myth rather than exploring his deeper personal struggles. Only the performances by Vicky Kaushal and Manisha Koirala provided some relief in an otherwise surface-level portrayal.
Then came a moment unheard of: Hirani and Shahrukh Khan were coming together in a movie that seemed to focus on a very relevant and trending topic. But if you’re thinking that’s the unheard moment, you obviously didn’t watch the movie. It happened during the movie when we, along with so many others who had grown up revisiting Hirani classics, left Dunki midway, unable to digest the, at best, mediocre slush we were witnessing. Dunki had done the unthinkable, making Hirani and SRK resort to trivial antics in their attempt to seem contemporary, culminating in a climax that was more excruciating than moving.
What Went Wrong?
This isn’t the first time a star has crashed. Many have found the burden of expectations tough to carry. For almost two decades, Hirani had been the filmmaker with the hundred percent record. With each hit, he must have felt the intoxicating pull of validation more and more, pulling him away from the more risque approach that had been his calling card when he first burst into our collective consciousness.
While it’s understandable for a filmmaker to experience creative exhaustion, the problem doesn’t lie in the films’ dullness. If made with sincerity, they would still have been watchable. However, it seems the focus has shifted towards aligning with contemporary trends at the expense of quality, leading to a series of unimpressive films.
And then there are those who believe that the Hirani myth was a product of a team that he had relied on. With the success of Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 12th Fail, that theory has gained more traction. Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. If Hirani is to rise again, we, his fans, need to give this orphan the jaadoo ki jhappi it needs to get back on his feet and produce the magic we know he’s capable of.
So, here’s us saying aal is well.
Lagay Raho Raju Bhai!
