Dear 2023, will you be kind to Ranveer Singh, please? Between making him pose in the raw against a tacky carpet and flashing the outlandish for the paparazzi, 2022 was so mean to him that it had him do the annoying caricature of a Parsi, for no reason at all, to endorse a bank. Wit is fine but money and finance are dignified territory. The brain behind the Kotak Mahindra ad, therefore, needs to have his head examined for incongruously making Ranveer clown and caricature to sell banking services. All year, everything Ranveer did offscreen contrasted with the focused India captain out to win the World Cup (83), the Gujarati who batted for a girl child (Jayeshbhai Jordaar) and the sober double roles he played in what was purportedly a comedy (Cirkus). All flops. Will 2023 restore sanity in April, when his next film Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani rolls along? We do know it has better music than Ranveer’s last three films and there’s sweet ageing romance (Dharmendra, Shabana with Jaya Bachchan) sandwiched between the youthfulness of Ranveer-Alia. And that Rocky is Ranveer’s real-life pet name. So 2023, will you give Rocky a balanced performance that matches his personality and a credible screenplay? Do also get him to go easy with the overexposure, please.
Dear 2023, will you also be nicer to our Union minister who is clueless about who he hosts and fetes at the taxpayer’s cost at our international film festivals in Goa and voiceless at the end of it? Clueless also about who silently runs NFDC or who powers film festivals all over the country. Cruel 2022 followed Anurag Thakur’s IFFI goof-up with five big thuds in his backyard, when he lost all five Assembly seats in his home constituency of Hamirpur in the hill state of Himachal Pradesh. 2023, do give our I&B minister a natty performance to go with his natty wardrobe, please.
Earlier years gave Taapsee Pannu the guts to stand up for what she believes in off-screen. But why has her brain gone on vacation when vetting a script? From Thappad in 2019, a terrific message unconvincingly rushed out, to Haseen Dilruba, a yucky crime story, Rashmi Rocket, Shabaash Mithu, Dobaaraa and Blurr (which she also co-produced), it’s been a string of flops. Where has the Taapsee of Pink, Mulk, Mangal Mission and Badla vanished? Dear 2023, do bring Taapsee’s script sense back from holiday and do tell her that being the pivotal character alone won’t elevate her to Vidya Balan status.
Dear 2023, if you can spare some time for character artistes, will you please also send a fine actor like Kumud Mishra to the gym? He is beginning to look like Oliver Hardy without the funny bone when playing a sexologist in Dr Arora (on Sony LIV) and huffing in a leather jacket on a motorbike in Tripling Season 3 (Zee5).
While viewers have watched actors and directors grope for victory, there’s been backstage rivalry too. Pushpa (2021), Gangubai Kathiawadi, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2, Mani Ratnam’s super hit PS1, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Avatar: Way Of Water, Doctor Strange and Dhrishyam 2 came up trumps in 2022, all handled quietly by PR man Parag Desai, personal media director to Amitabh Bachchan and Ajay Devgn too. With Pushpa 2 and PS2 much awaited, will 2023 please put some sense into critics’ heads that PR people can neither be given the credit nor the discredit for the content of a film?
Will the New Year also grant elephantine creativity to those with jumbo budgets in Hollywood? After they’ve explored every nook, cranny and black hole in space, the makers of both Wakanda Forever and Avatar plunged underwater and came up with family, environment, kindness of creatures and cruelty of mankind as their plotlines, with a general splash of special effects. Two different studios and it looked like one was a sequel of the other. Both blockbusters. But dear 2023, will you send all these filmmakers, and some from the Hindi film industry as well, for a refreshing deep dive far away to brainstorm with new minds and surface with a new thought, please?
Bharathi S. Pradhan is a senior journalist and author
