The trailer of The Power (yes that’s the name of the film) shows anything but the power of a trailer to draw audiences into movie theatres. Luckily for the makers of this seeming monstrosity audiences don’t need to be invited into movie theatres. But I doubt even on the OTT platform at home, they would want to watch something so abysmally humdrum and so self-consciously pedestrian. Lamentably there is not an iota of self-parody in the torrent of triteness in the trailer.
It is all deadly serious. What came to me as a surprise was to know that this junket of juvenilia was directed by my friend Mahesh Manjrekar. Seriously Mahesh? What didn’t come as a surprise was to know that the leading man of The Power, Vidyut Jamwal apparently doesn’t want to promote the film?
Understandable. Isn’t it enough that he actually agreed, in a fit of madness, to be part of something and do unabashedly banal? To actually hear Vidyut mouth action-hero Dharmendra’s favourite line “Chun chun ke badla lunga” was to be transported to the 1980s, quite easily the worst decade for Hindi cinema.
I have some advice for filmmakers offering content to the OTT platform: Please don’t treat the platform as a dumpling ground.
Image source: Youtube/ZeePlex, Youtube