2008: When Oye Lucky Lucky Oye was the sweet spot in the year of average movies

The two wheeler, the tiffin-box packed for office lunch, the pushy colleagues showing up to check out their new bhabhiji, and the hero’s bashful decency becoming characteristics to celebrate, rather than berate: Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi is a film that allowed SRK yet another stab at playing the middle-class hero, a regular guy who went to work, and returned home, breaking the habits of a life-time strictly to please the woman in his life.

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John Abraham and Abhishek Bachchan in a still from Dostana.

Dharma’s Dostana gave homosexuality a Bollywood boost by having its male leads pretend to be gay, just to get into an apartment owned by the very straight Priyanka Chopra. The film had Boman Irani as a screamingly gay character, limp-wrist very much to the fore, Abhishek Bachchan as a male nurse who actually works for a living, and John Abraham who flashes a shapely butt in his bright yellow swimming trunks. It was castigated for making fun of queer people, but what it did was get homosexuality out in the open, making the phrase part of everyday chatter from Lucknow to Ludhiana.

With Sarkar Raj, Amitabh Bachchan showed he was still very much in the reckoning in starry senior stakes, and it remains one of RGV’s better films.

With Ashutosh Gowariker’s Jodha Akbar, Hrithik and Aishwarya cemented their reputation as being Bollywood’s hottest jodi, with a scene between the Mughal emperor and his Rajput paramour creating serious steam. It was also the director’s last critically-acclaimed hit.

Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan in a still from Jodha Akbar. (Source: Academy Museum of Motion Pictures)

But 2008 was clearly the Year of Ghajini. The blockbuster, directed by A R Murugadoss and starring Aamir, a remake of the director’s own Tamil film, was a first for a couple of reasons. For one, it brought the phrase South masala back in popular parlance. Hindi potboilers had been there-done that back in the 70s and 80s, but in the hands of Southern filmmakers, the masala was pounded for more violence, more decibel, and zero nuance.

It was also the first Indian film to smash the ‘100 crore’ boundary. After Ghajini, it all boiled down to whether a film had cracked the 100 crore ceiling, and entered it. Aamir also showed how marketing can be sharpened in a canny star’s hands, by going across barber shops in the country, giving surprised patrons the Ghajini cut!

And in the sweet spot, Dibakar Banerjee’s Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, had Mumbai boy Abhay Deol play the street-smart Delhi chor Lovinder aka Lucky, its sharpness and its very Dilli vibe, along with its love for pesky Pomeranians, pehelwaans and papajis making it a delightful watch, then and now.