Who killed 'Ghanchakkar'?

What is it about Rajkumar Gupta’s film after the warmly received Aamir and No One Killed Jessica that so put off critics and the audiences? The footfall for a film bringing together four successful brands names — UTV, Vidya Balan, Emraan Hashmi and Gupta — was noticeably meagre. Considering Vidya Balan and Emraan’s last outing The Dirty Picture was a huge hit, how do we explain this lack of interest in a film that is, on paper, a hilarious plot about a heist, a thief who forgets where he put the stolen money, and his outlandish wife.

What went wrong?
One clue to the fiasco is...Vidya Balan. Ironically, she proved this quirky and unconventional comedy’s undoing by promoting the film in the unbearable housewife’s character everywhere that she went. Now, it is one thing to promote a film as a pregnant wife in Kahaani. It made audiences go ‘awwww’. But to go around dressed in clothes that seem to scream loud and obnoxious at every media meet, became a bit too much. Male members of the audience shivered at the thought of spending two hours with every husband’s favourite nightmare.

The marketing team should have advised Vidya to go slow on the Punjaban gharwali act. And really, Vidya seemed a little too much in character. If size matters, she was dead-on. But everything else was wrong. It sent out the wrong message about the film. The film became about Vidya’s clothes more than anything else and that turned out to be the film’s biggest undoing.

Though the film isn’t your typical Bollywood fare, it is bad, nowhere close to how bad the collections are. Vidya got the brief right. So did the rest of the cast. And the story proceeds from paper to screen with ease. There is nothing wrong with the script or it’s execution. What was wrong was the message about the film.

Seeing those awful outfits at every event for a month, the audience just didn’t want to go in and see more of that. Yes, it is that simple.