When I saw
Aishwariya Rai Bachchan in the
star cast of ‘Fanney Khan’, the first reaction I had was ‘Why? Again, a
comeback?’. If you have grown professionally on the diet of Hindi film
industry, experience, by now, has taught you not to be optimistic about the
chemistry of the star and the script. You smell the taste seeing the menu card.
Aishwarya Rai
Bachchan fails again. The ‘drop-dead gorgeous’ woman, as a film critic
describes her in his review of her recent offering, had nothing much to offer
beyond her beauty that certainly went awry with her superfluous act in the
film. The choice of script seemed to have failed her, again.
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A number of heroines
of her age, like Rani Mukerji, Karishma Kapoor, Madhuri Dixit Nene, Kajol, etc
have hard-balled a second innings and hoped they would be able to draw their
fandom in the same way as earlier, not all in vain.
The late Sridevi made
a meticulous move when she meant to make a comeback. It was wise of her to
choose films like ‘English Vinglish’ and ‘Mom’, where she played a mother
almost of her real age and both the films turned out to be huge successes.
Similarly, Rani
Mukerji (Chopra) recently hedged her offering to character driven films with
‘Hichki’, where she played a woman with Tourette Syndrome, who turned her
weakness into her biggest strength and the stupendous success of the film
harboured an impression that past 40 and mother of a child can still have a
happy hitch with the audience with the right script.
If Kajol was sure
enough that she can reinstate her oomph at this age, paired opposite Shah Rukh
Khan again in a romantic film (Rohit Shetty directorial ‘Dilwale’), it had to
loom with grim inevitability. Kajol matured to the reality and ventured for
‘Helicopter Eela’, where she ages as a single mother of a college-going
student. This is cerebral and if the trailer has lit up the sensory cortex of
the audience and evoked a smile, the film is a success.
But majority of the
successful films mentioned above were made under home production. Does that
mean that industry is still far to evolve from being sceptical about writing
and making films keeping yesteryears’ heroines in mind, unlike the male
counterparts like Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor? “Heroines have a short shelf
life. Luckily, we (male actors) have been here for the last 25 years, so we
don’t have a choice,” Ajay Devgn told me in 2014.
Madhuri Dixit tried
rejuvenating her dance avatar with ‘Aaja Nachle’, Karishma Kapoor braved
‘Dangerous Ishhq’—but audience had moved on. So they were fated to fray. Not
sure how much long-stuck Priety Zinta starrer ‘Bhaiyyaji Superhit,’ which is
due in October, would struck a responsive chord with the audience.
Trade
pandits and somewhat patrons of the industry argue that now it’s time when the
script is the real hero and they play a second fiddle. But that too have shrunk
for the female actors. When we see Amitabh Bachchan, 75, have still not past
his prime with eight film due under his credit, female actors, close to half
his age seems to have lost in the mist of time.
