Thaindian News

May 15, 2010 (Sampurn Wire): Bollywood can throw up some surprises and there was one in store in the month of May with Shahid Kapoor getting a well deserved success in the form of ‘Badmaash Company’. Till the day of the film’s release, many in the industry doubted if it would manage to even break even. However, as things stand today, junta has given a Thumbs-Up to the film with the first week collections boasting of a bountiful 21 crores. This is the second best start ever for Shahid Kapoor whose ‘Kaminey’ had opened better than ‘Badmaash Company’ last week. However, the budget here is half of what ‘Kaminey’ would have cost which means that there are celebrations galore for Shahid Kapoor.

However, let’s pause and see what the film has done for Yash Raj Films. After having put big money on the likes of Ranbir Kapoor (Rocket Singh - Salesman of the Year) and Priyanka Chopra (Pyaar Impossible), both of which were loosing prepositions, the production house has finally hit the right notes with an unassuming ‘Badmaash Company’. One can be sure that even they would have been left a little surprise with the run of this film which is much more than just an average box office fare that they would have possibly bargained for.

With no competition in the second week, ‘Badmaash Company’ is all set to add on some more moolah and comfortably cross the 30 crore mark in it’s lifetime run. In addition, it also marks the arrival of debutant director Parmeet Sethi who has scored a boundary in his very first attempt.

This brings me to one of the worst films ever made in the current decade - ‘It’s A Wonderful Afterlife’. No wonder, majority of audience which bothered to check out the film shared similar sentiments and results were there to be seen as this Gurinder Chadha’s directed strange fiction tale disappeared from theaters in one week flat. With both English as well as Hindi version of the film being totally rejected and struggling to gain even 1 crore at the box office, the film’s failure shows that audience is least concerned about people behind the making the film (in this case NRIs) if the promo and the storyline doesn’t sound exciting. In case of ‘It’s A Wonderful Afterlife’, it was only the worst case scenario with the film only ending up scaring away the audience, leave aside failing to excite them.

– Rudhir Burman / Sampurn Wire