Fortunately for ‘Madras Cafe’, the film hasn’t gone the ‘D-Day’ way. Belonging to the same genre and boasting of a similar treatment, the Nikhil Advani directed film had to struggle for a good run at the box office. Despite all around good reviews coming its way and audience appreciation as well, the film had to make way for the other releases. Thankfully this wasn’t the case for Shoojit Sircar directed ‘Madras Cafe’ which, after seeing very good escalation over the weekend, held it’s ground right through the week, hence resulting in good collections of around 34 crores.
Now these are very good numbers for a film of this genre which, in earlier times, would have been termed as a docudrama. However this wasn’t the case to be as target audience for the film developed good liking for it and as a result, there was no fall in collections during the weekdays. As a matter of fact right from Monday to Wednesday, the collections only showed rise which indicates the kind of appreciation that the film enjoyed.
Also, now in one quick stroke, the film is already John Abraham’s biggest solo grosser till date, and that too in a matter of a single week. His last highest grosser was ‘Force’ and now ‘Madras Cafe’ would comfortably double those numbers. While 50 crore is a given for ‘Madras Cafe’, hence ensuring a hit tag for the film, one waits to see how far does it go from here, considering the fact that competition arrives in the form of ‘Satyagraha’. Having said that, while numbers do hold academic interest, the fact remains that yet another mid-budget quality film has succeeded in 2013 which has seen a dozen odd such successes.
Joginder Tuteja tweets @tutejajoginder
