1. Drona
Talking of Priyanka, as we always do – how lucky we are to have had her around this year – this column might otherwise have been a lot shorter. Because of course there was Drona – the first in a promised new fantasy series (oh no! no! no!). The film starred a noticeably overweight Abhishek Bachchan as the hero and Priyanka as his warrior-woman sidekick. Once again, Priyanka looked good enough to fuel a few fantasies of her own and her acting was pretty decent – and in fact Abhi’s acting was okay too – but, oh dear the plot was so hackneyed. When will Bollywood scriptwriters learn that just having a good idea for a movie is not really enough to fill three hours of a Saturday afternoon. This movie has a one-line plot and even that has been stolen from just about every second-rate fantasy-based computer game that has ever hit the stands and teased the thumbs of torpid teenagers in the last generation. Give it a miss and spend the time doing something more worthwhile like spray-painting your cat instead.
At a production cost of around 50cr, which including distribution would add up to a total investment of about 100cr, the income from revenue of just 11cr makes this one of the absolute disaster movies of all time.
We can only hope that these actors, directors and producers can learn from their mistakes in 2008 and go on to make good movies in 2009, so they don’t end up on our list again! We will be waiting and watching to see what happens next year!
