When my friend Aatika spent INR 1,500 (about 2,400 Pakistani rupees), to take her husband and minor son to watch Brothers, I sort of sniggered.
It was not a typical boys’ day out that she was underwriting; she “expected a well-made sports movie”, her curiosity being piqued by “really good” trailers.
I was sceptical about the movie. It’s another clone, I had thought to myself resignedly, and Aatika, otherwise a level-headed person, had swallowed the hype.
I mean, have sports movies from Bollywood become so sleek that even a mixed martial arts film like Brothers would appeal to a woman who – and this I know for certain – is happiest when snuggled up with Pride and Prejudice?
I had my doubts.
Brothers is the latest in a line of sports movies from the Mumbai film industry, a genre it first explored with Lagaan with mega success, garnering some INR 600 million in receipts.
That was about 15 years ago, and since then, India’s tinsel town has taken the occasional stab at sports movies.
Some, such as the women’s hockey-centric Chak De! India (literally meaning “pick up, India” or “come on, India” in Punjabi) were runaway hits, even as others, such as the cricket-based Stumped left their makers just that: stumped.
So what does it take for a sports-based movie from Bollywood to click? Is it a liberal dose of sports? Do sports sell? Or does it take something else?
Not a ‘trend’ yet
Frankly, I think there are too few sports movies from Bollywood to call it a new trend; after Lagaan in 2001, on an average, only one sports movie has been made every year.
That makes it about 16 sports films from Mumbai so far, and not all have managed to create box office records.
Also read: Bollywood and Sports
In contrast, Hollywood is prolific in this regard, and has even made a film on robotics (Spare Parts), which is on four Hispanic high school students forming a robotics club, and taking on the reigning US champs – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
To my deep satisfaction, I found that Mumbai-based filmmaking instructor Ranjan Das, who also writes the weekly newspaper column 'Screen Savour', felt the way I do.
According to him, sport per se is not a success recipe for Bollywood. “The film [also] has to have a star to pull it off...and an emotional connect with the audience,” he tells me.
Star power
It is a great point, I think. Look at Lagaan– a period drama that tugged at patriotic sentiments over a game of cricket. But the film also had superstar Aamir Khan in the lead.
Brothers, which Aatika gave a thumbs-down to but has so far raked in more than INR 800 million in receipts, has exciting MMA bouts in the ring.
MMA is a sport that champion fighter Daniel Isaac tells me is getting increasingly popular in India. But the movie also rides on the popularity of actors Akshay Kumar and Sidharth Malhotra.
For Das, the lead role in Chak De! could have been played “by any A-lister” but it needed the star, Shah Rukh Khan, to pull it off. His rationale: Nobody would have gone to see a film on women’s hockey had it been a Bobby Deol or an Ajay Devgan.
“I would say the film’s success lay in the presence of a star.”
Talking of stars, I had quite liked Saif Ali Khan’s Ta Ra Rum Pum, but wondered how it would fare. I mean, how many average Indians could be familiar with NASCAR?
The movie ended up making a cool INR 377 million.
I had a bigger doubt over Ferrari Ki Sawaari, a sports comedy that had Sharman Joshi in the lead role. An extremely gifted actor, Joshi is no superstar. The movie used cricketer Sachin Tendulkar’s Ferrari for eyeballs, but how many people would know what a Ferrari was?
It was even a bigger hit at INR 440 miilion.
The movie’s director-scriptwriter Rajesh Mapuskar tells me he was “never hesitant” about using the brand name “Ferrari” in the movie title.
“Every Indian knows the Ferrari as Sachin's car, there was already an ownership sentiment we share as ‘apna sachin ki gaddi’ (our Sachin’s car), so that made it better to incorporate ‘Ferrari’ in the title for mass appeal.”
So the star here was Tendulkar and his sports car – by default.
Plot luck
But as Das says, a strong storyline is needed for a sports movie to click. Chak De! had a “great story and a great script”, something he does not want to discount. I believe Ferrari Ki Sawaari also touched a chord with the audience with its storyline – a single parent (the father) bringing up a young boy.
The takeoff point in any film is a human story, and both Lagaan and Chak De! have the underdog taking on the mighty and winning.
Other sports movies that successfully garnered viewer sympathy were Iqbal (2005), which told the story of a deaf and mute aspiring cricketer, and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013), a biopic on Indian Olympian Milkha Singh.
One film that dared to look beyond cricket and soccer is Striker (2010). Set in a lower-middle class Mumbai suburb, a boy uses carrom as a tool to get even with the neighbourhood goon.
Striker was a commercial failure, but generated a lot of critical acclaim and garnered over 800,000 views in the first two weeks of its release on YouTube.
“It’s not that sports films cannot do well; they are subject to the same laws that govern other genre films,” Das says. “But there has to be a basic human drama.”
Plus, I may add, it needs the right stars – in the cast and the cosmic grid.