India Abroad - December 30, 2011

BOLLYWOOD ROYALTY
Three men and a babe
2011 may be remembered as the year that laid down Bollywood’s new pecking order
For the better part of the last decade, it’s been almost unanimously acknowledged that Aamir Khan knows what he’s doing. Sure, he
might seem too far out on a limb but, as the
pieces fall, he always ends up topping him-
self and standing taller than before. So the
industry — this industry that relies so heav-
ily on what Conventional Wisdom and
Trade Pundits say — has, incredibly enough,
thrown in the towel and given up trying to
beat Aamir.

every major A-lister will be lining up their very own
South-remake, Salman will be back as Prem.
Meanwhile, the third Khan — who, for most of his
career, has been the greater one, the self-anointed
King — has tragically shot himself in the big toe. His
image has taken an almighty hammering, what with
sobbing on talk shows and prostrating himself
rather embarrassingly in front of young pop
princesses, and hosting a most execrable gameshow
himself, one where he was vulgar and painful and
tacky, more Shakti Kapoor than any flavor of Khan
we were used to.
Shah Rukh pushed everything he could into his
Ra.One, a massive mega-budget disaster that he
promised would take Indian films to the next level.
The effects were occasionally impressive, sure, and
while the film had a good opening, it came a cropper with
audiences and critics bashing it from every angle. The hype
was excessive and now, with Shah Rukh’s Don 2 in the
wings as the year’s last major release, he’s apparently being
asked to stay away from the publicity machine because peo-
ple might be overstuffed with Khan.
The King, at least for now, has abdicated, and that leaves
a spot on Bollywood’s big three.
The usurper is a youngster, a mercurially talented lad all
set to be bigger than the biggest. Ranbir Kapoor impressed
right from his first flop, and soon became that rare kind of
star: One who would shine despite the film around him,
one you would like no matter what you thought of the film
around him and its mediocrity. He amused wide-eyedly in
Saawariya, showed screen charm in the forgettable
Bachna Ae Haseeno, was disarmingly credible in Wake Up
Sid, and was pitch perfect in the underrated and tragically
lesser-seen Rocket Singh: Salesman Of The Year. At around
the same time, he goofed his way through a harebrained
comedy called Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani, in the review
for which I compared him — thanks to
his irrepressible spontaneity — to the
one and only Kishore Kumar, instead of
any of his own illustrious forebears.
Since then he’s been in bad films like
Raajneeti and Anjaana Anjaani. But
this year, with Imtiaz Ali’s Rockstar, he
got a canvas large enough to scream in.
As a self-flagellating rebel without a
cause, Kapoor proved himself as the
leading man of the year and an actor far
more important than any from his gen-
eration. And sometime not too far away,
he’s playing KishoreDa in a biopic.

RAJA
SEN
Raja Sen is Rediff.com’s movie critic

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