Sports based films suck ...

Bollywood will see the release of another film related to sports this week. Apparantly "Dil Bole Hadippa"(DBH) will see Rani Mukherjee(RM) being an ace cricketer who disguises as boy just so that she can participate/play in some cricket tournament.

I always seem to have one big issue with films based on sports. Esp. those in India. Sports films will obviously be incomplete withouth sporting action. So a cricket based film will have to have someone playing genuine cricket shots or bowling genuine/legal deliveries. A hockey film should have the protagonists playing hockey of the utmost skill and performance level. A soccer based film should show the actors playing amazingly good soccer. But the biggest problem is... THEY DON'T!!!

Well, they do show the actors playing the sport. But it can never look as good as we're used to seeing it. HOW ON EARTH CAN RANI MUKHERJEE EVER PLAY A STRAIGHT DRIVE AS GOOD AS WE'VE SEEN SACHIN TENDULKAR OR RAHUL DRAVID PLAY? These actors go on an film promotion spree claiming that they trained for six months (surprisingly everyone trains exactly 6 months, be in RM for cricket, the "chak de" girls for hockey....I wonder why bollywood is obsessed with "6 month training"?). Don't they ever realise that people spend their lifetime training in some sport and yet they cannot make it big?

The fault I think lies with the producer and the director. I don't think they are people who understand the sport to the highest level and therefore when they shoot they don't realise that the actual sporting action looks fairly amatuerish.

Some of them do put in a lot of effort and come reasonably close to not making a fool of themselves. "Chake De India" was a prime example. I'm sure anyone who has seen hockey would realize that the girls in that movie were no where close to look like pros (forget winning a World Cup). But it wasn't too bad either. Some of the scenes (maybe shot with professional hockey players) looked fairly commendable. And more so, the rest of the film were so good that the audience (probably) forgot about this.
Same goes with Lagaan. Sure, the cricket there was nowhere near as good as international cricket. But their story basically had the actors not knowing sport.. so they were learning the sport and were not born champions. Even without this, the quality of cricket there was fairly impressive (I loved the fact that the ball did not spin in the second over... and started spinning later when it became old).

People might argue that the film is about the story and not really the sporting action. Maybe... but then don't show me the junk!! If you're so skillful, make a movie about sport without showing the actual sport. Sure DBH might be more about how this girl is going all out to achieve her dream of playing cricket. But the sight of her holding a bat clumsily and hitting a (so called) straight six makes me cringe. Just look at the promo below. Looking at this... and thinking of the climax of the film... yes ... you guessed it right.. a cricket match.. tense situation... wickets falling every other ball... and suddenly our beloved (yuck!!) girl-turned-boy batsman (batswoman?) finds the form of his/her life and starts hitting fours and sixes at will... possibly hitting a six on the last ball to win the match...

WHY WOULD ANYONE LIKE IT? If she trained for six months... did no one tell her how to hold a bat. Or did she train herlself as a scorer or umpire and only realized it on the day of the shoot that she has to play a cricket shot ... not raise or stretch hands.



For all you know... after all this rant, I myself might like the film. But it can only be because of other, non-cricketing reasons.