By this time next year, Saif Ali Khan will play the chef
reconnecting with his estranged family with a food van in the Indian remake of
Jon Favreau's 2014 Chef. Interestingly, it brings together the makers of two
100-plus crore grossers of 2016 in India-Favreau of Jungle Book and director
Raja Krishna Menon of Airlift. Favreau had himself essayed the lead role in the
original.
Food for thought: Will it be a guaranteed hit? Seems so, given
its feel-good family story and fun ambience! But then Saif Ali Khan has played
a chef with elan even before-in the 2005 rom-com Salaam Namaste, where again it
was about finally reconnecting with his lost, live-in love, Preity Zinta. The
film was a massive hit in Australia where it was shot, did well abroad and was
a modest success in Indian cities.
But there's more news for the gourmands: Nana Patekar will
similarly replace Prakash Raj, in the latter's Hindi debut as director, Tadka
(loosely meaning the tempering done to a dish with oil and spices after it is
cooked). Prakash had played the hero in the original Tamil version that he also
directed, Un Samayal Arayil. The multi-lingual hit (in the South languages) has
an interesting concept-four people unconnected with each other are finally
brought together by-you guessed it!- food!
A 2016 release declared a clean success-that is, everyone
from producer to distributor to exhibitor made profits-is the film Ki & Ka,
a love story directed by R. Balki. The narration had leading man Arjun Kapoor
drooling over the concept. In this film, he played a rich heir who prefers to
be a homemaker while his executive wife works. He naturally is a skilled cook,
rustling up exciting food too, and for the role, Arjun learnt how to cook, cut
vegetables, and flip omelets like a seasoned cook and so on. In the 2010 flop
Break Ke Baad, Imran Khan too had played a rich man's son whose dad wants him
to join his business.
Hindi cinema is now as much of a global addiction as Indian
food. In fact, our spicy gastronomic and celluloid recipes both keep winning
new devotees all over the world every day. It is not for nothing that Kangana
Ranaut, as Rani, attracts a European chef even in Queen as she prepares and
serves spicy golgappeto the foreigners in their home country to win a cooking
competition.
Off-screen, Elli Avram, who has mentally made India her home
even before she settled here as an actor, even popularized Indian street-food
on a cookery show for a leading Swedish channel recently.
Nevertheless, food has not been all that common as a theme
in Hindi cinema. We do suspect Balki of being a great foodie though, for in his
debut film Cheeni Kum, he got Amitabh Bachchan to play a 64 year-old pompous
chef and restaurant owner in London, who falls for a 30-something girl whose
father is younger to him! And in his production English Vinglish, a simpleton
housewife (Sridevi) is an expert cook and sellsladdoos that she makes at home.
Her cooking skills help her when she enrolls in an English conversational class
in USA while on a trip.
Some 44 years ago, Hrishikesh Mukherjee spun a wonderful
concoction called Bawarchi, in which Rajesh Khanna entered a dysfunctional
joint family's household as a cook and all-purpose helper and gradually showed
each member the error of his or her ways. He strategically won them over,
literally using the proverb that the way to a man's (and in this case also a
woman's) heart went through their stomachs!
In 1998, David Dhawan, ever the Hrishi-da aficionado, made
Govinda reprise a similar role in his part-reworking of Bawarchi as Hero No.1.
While the former film, well ahead of its times, did not do too well but became
cult later, the latter was an instant hit.
A film that did well in certain centers was the amusing
Mahesh Bhatt movie Duplicate with 'two' Shah Rukh Khans. The straight one is a
chef and he is arrested as he is mistaken for a wicked and criminal lookalike.
Probably, the most extensive look at food in recent times
was Daawat-E-Ishq, in which the chef hero (Aditya Roy Kapur) has a famous
restaurant and who falls head-over-heels for a young girl (Parineeti Chopra),
hell-bent on punishing suitors who ask for dowry. Obviously the resolution of
their story was connected withkhaana as well. Sadly, this fairly riveting film
came a cropper at the box-office.
Another flop that was fully food-centric was the 2005 Ramji
Londonwaley, about a village cook sent to London to a fancy restaurant and his
subsequent misadventures there. In Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana, it was all
about a secret chicken recipe and its economic impact on a family. The
interesting premise was marred by an overlong, tedious and needlessly dark
narration for what was essentially a comedy. Kunal Kapoor was the grandson
searching for the secret of his now-senile grandfather's special recipe that
made their family restaurant a hit.
Many other films have also been named after food items
without any connection with delicacies in their storylines, like Chocolate (a
thriller) and Barfi! (an off-beat romance). But in the ultimate analysis, it's
all about cooking up that filmi recipe that is considered delicious and
consumed with relish by most of the audience.
