Dabangg has everything necessary for it to qualify as a classic bad movie, only that it really isn’t a classic bad movie per se. Allow me to elaborate. Set in the rural badlands of Uttar Pradesh, the film appears on first glance akin to the kind of pulpy 80’s and 90’s Hindi movies that would comprise of over-the-top action and machismo, and littered with overtly “filmy” dialogues; but dig deep and you realize that it is, in essence, a parody of the same. At the centre of the film lies the larger-than-life character of Chulbul Pandey (played with memorable swagger by Salman Khan), a corrupt cop with devil-may-care attitude, but with his heart in the right place. This Indianised version of Spaghetti Westerns is a heady concoction of family melodrama, farce, impossible plot constructions, cheesy romance, below-the-belt humour and Matrix-style action, with a few song-and-dance sequences thrown in. What I found most likeable about the film was that, its satirical intentions are very subtle, without an ounce of snootiness whatsoever. Thus, like Grindhouse, it is the kind of film that the first-row crowd of theatres would be bowled over by, the ones whose days of fun collided with watching “masala” blockbusters would find it a walk down the memory lanes, and the more discerning viewers would have loads of fun while also appreciating what the film actually represents.
Director: Abhinav Kashyap
Genre: Action/Comedy
Language: Hindi
Country: India
