Ever since Sahir Lodhi’s film trailer has been released, he’s become the butt of all jokes. People are making fun of the film and are already dreading its outcome. But our concern is this: Are we being to hard on his film Raasta because of our personal biases? So what if he’s directing, writing, producing, acting, dancing in his own film. Let’s take off our let’s-make-fun-of-Sahir-lodhi goggles and assess the situation for a minute.
Compared to the kind of films we’ve seen this year, we can’t say that Raasta’s trailer is completely atrocious. It looks like a typical b grade Pakistani movie (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. One must be self aware of the work and the money and the effort that is invested). It’s an action flick with heroes and villains, as Sahir’s Shahrukh-Khan-like voice narrates in the background. We see Mathira for a fleeting moment, (from the looks of it, she seems to be doing an item number in the film.) We see a bunch of generic words like ‘Love’, ‘Hatred’ and ‘Trust’ pop up on our screen. We see Sahir sporting a mane of gold streaked hair and reflective aviators.
ALL of this, we could have ignored. I mean, really, we’ve seen worse. BUT it’s Sahir’s blatant imitation of SRK that we just can’t digest. First of all, it’s not just the voice or the fact that he bloody well does look like Bollywood’s biggest star. It’s the fact that Sahir isn’t even trying to make his own identity. He wants to cash in on the fact that he can be SRK’s Pakistani version. If anyone has seen the Rahat Fateh Ali song for Raasta, you’ll see that the video is shot exactly like SRK’s videos, specially one from Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. The fact that India is also known to pick up our music hardly justifies that Lodhi pick up Shah Rukh’s identity. We would have been impressed had he at least tried to be unique.
Watch the trailer and decide for yourself…do you think Sahir Lodhi is acting like an SRK wannabe or is he unique and we’re just being our usual over-critical bitchy selves?
