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Rajkumar Hirani is one of those rare Indian filmmakers who has never had a flop in his career. Box office hits, which don’t necessarily speak about a film’s quality or longevity, however, have nothing to do with a film’s success, and here, Rajkumar Hirani does not have a 100 percent hit rate. Hirani started making movies in 2003 and his first film Munna Bhai MBBS was a crowd-pleaser. He subsequently turned it into a franchise with Lage Raho Munna Bhai and then moved on to making films like 3 Idiots, PK, and Sanju. Over the two decades that Hirani has been making movies, he has established a certain style for himself that hasn’t evolved much. People crack jokes in emotional situations and the extras in the scene end up in tears with smiles on their faces, the characters give out life lessons but in a Sadhguru-like way where they can sound new age-y and turn it into a catchphrase for the film’s marketing, and the jokes here are as massy as the ones that appear in Kapil Sharma’s shows.
Let’s talk about his last release Sanju, a biopic on actor Sanjay Dutt’s life, where Hirani whitewashed Sanjay’s image to the point where it was anyone else’s fault but Sanjay’s for the way his life turned out. Sanju was like a PR exercise to clean up Sanjay Dutt’s image in front of the masses who, by the way, are still not inclined to buy tickets for a film that is solely led by him. The entire film had a ‘bechara’ vibe going for him that left you wondering if this was indeed the life story of a man born with a silver spoon who chose to throw his life away many times, but was awarded multiple chances every time he reached the cusp. The idea that the media was to be blamed for Sanjay’s problems was simply bizarre but this became the grand conclusion of Hirani’s film. Sure, Ranbir got a chance to flex his acting muscles but making a hagiography for a man who is still working in the public eye was an odd choice by Hirani, that made for an odd film that isn’t the kind that will end up in anyone’s list of favourites.
His film PK, which continues to be the most forgettable film of his career, was made with the idea of calling out the business of religion. In today’s time, PK wouldn’t have even gotten a certificate from the censor board, and by that standard, it might seem like it was a bold film for its time but rewatching it now reminds you that until a few years ago, the audience was much more forgiving towards Aamir because there is no way that anyone would have accepted this performance over Lal Singh Chaddha. Hirani’s idea that PK’s point of view, who is a literal alien, can help in bringing an end to the odd quarrels that humans have created for themselves might have worked on paper, and at that time, in the cinemas too. But the film does not have the heart that makes it as endearing as Hirani’s first film Munna Bhai MBBS.
With Dunki, Hirani is coming back with his style of cinema once again. The promotional material of the film suggests that this one is another one of those ‘feel-good’ movies that he first made 20 years ago. But in a year when Shah Rukh Khan dared to experiment with a genre he had never attempted in his three-decade-long career, it is time to see if Hirani can manage to sell the same wine in a new bottle.
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