June 22, 2010 (Sampurn Wire): Till just a few days back, the industry was smiling with the blockbuster success of ‘Rajneeti’. However, the smiles have vanished all over again with ‘Raavan’ turning out to be disaster at the box office. Wait, before we delve into the box office fate of the film, let’s also talk about the film by itself. The fact remains that this Mani Ratnam directed film is disastrous even from the content and execution perspective. Certain films have good content but get marred by poor execution. Some films have a decent execution but the script doesn’t contain much meat to take them through. However, when the combination of both these factors turns out to be poor, there is nothing that can salvage the situation.

This is what happened in case of ‘Raavan’ where the coming together of names like Mani Ratnam, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, A.R. Rahman, Gulzar and Big Pictures just couldn’t help the cause. The film received poor all around response. Audience, industry folks, trade and critics - there was just no liking for this extravagant affair that was strong only from its technical perspective. Worse, for all its claims of originality, ‘Raavan’ was nothing but the coming together of Subhash Ghai’s ‘Khalnayak’ and Ram Gopal Varma’s ‘Jungle’. Though both these films were entertaining, ‘Raavan’ wasn’t and it showed in the box office collections.

As predicted last week, a good opening was never on the cards for ‘Raavan’. It was stated that the film would require at least 70% opening and sustained word of mouth to do anything worthwhile at the box office. However, as it turned out, ‘Raavan’ had a below average opening of 50% across the country and that is now staring at the bottom of the barrel due to an out and out negative word of mouth. Few lovers of art can still be seen patronising the film, but sadly such numbers are miniscule.

The way ‘Raavan’ is currently performing, it is all set to score far less than the last big budgeted disaster - ‘Kites’. The Hrithik Roshan starrer had managed a very good opening weekend (30 crores) for itself despite poor word of mouth and reviews. However, for ‘Raavan’ it would indeed be a task to reach the 30 crores mark even after the completion of one full week, with less than 20 crores coming in after the closure of first weekend. Moreover, from second week onwards it is only expected to go further downhill despite no competition.

All in all, yet another sad outing for Abhishek Bachchan after ‘Delhi 6′ as both the films were placed entirely on his shoulders. As for Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, she would now have to look forward to the release of ‘Action Replayy’ and ‘Guzaarish’ to hunt for that elusive hit.

-Joginder Tuteja/ Sampurn Wire