Dabangg: So Bad It’s Good

It’s loud, it’s showy, it’s clichéd and we love it. By now you’d probably have read all that there was to read about Dabangg. Salman’s shirt that tears itself in the climax as he flexes his muscles, the sunglasses he pins to the back of his shirt collar, the cheesy dialogue and the fact that the heroine is a mere prop. Even the fact that there is an item number called Munni that Zandu Balm has taken offence to and especially the fact that Salman and not Mallaika is the one who walks away with the bells and the whistles and the hoots in it.

So then – what is the genius idea that has led us to open Filter with it this issue? Or was the answer something simple as us not finding large enough wallpapers for movies that were releasing this October?

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The answer is a lot simpler. We just liked Dabangg that much. Even though the list of claimants taking credit for introducing India to pulp rivals that of a disputed property in Colaba, we at FHM have a slightly different take on things.

Movies like Dev D and Kaminey fall in the genre of pulp cinema (replace the drug laden guitar in Kaminey with an obscenely large diamond in Richie’s Snatch and things will begin to unfold). But, despite being fabulous movies they remained hindi movies with ‘Western Pulp’ sensibilities and not Indian.

Dabangg on the other hand is pure thoroughbred Indian pulp – the difference between aloo parantha and English breakfast. You can try looking for a deeper, more pseudo-intellectual explanation or a plot, or even a leather bound script and you will fail. And that’s why it’s pulp. It’s not going to win Salman any Oscars for his acting, his fluid dance movements can compete against a block of ice in fluidity and lose, his clothes are not what fashion would touch with a barge-poll but it’s true blue Indian pulp. He is a dirty cop but good at heart and in everything else.

Naysayers will of course insist it does not count as pulp cinema but as typical mindless Bollywood entertainment where the hero is larger than life, the woman a prop and everyone else at best an extra. They’ll wait for you to quieten down and then hurl the ultimate insult in their arsenal – it’s clichéd.

And that is what makes you love Dabangg, it’s clichéd, it’s unpretentious, it does not have any layers and it’s as complicated as dal fry – making it is no rocket science but there’s more ways to screw it up than ours and China’s population put together. It’s also the reason why Wanted was as a big hit as it was.

We loved Dabangg because it was so bad that it was good. We compare it not even to Snatch, but to something like Tarantino’s Death-Proof – no one knows why Kurt Russel’s sole objective in life is to ram into unsuspicious women on a highway and kill them, there is no script but you’ll watch it anyway. Plus Dabangg is simple, uncomplicated and unlike The Inception it will not inspire Google searches; it will inspire conversations but conversations in which the Goldclass folks will smile patronizingly at the movie calling it ‘kitsch’ with expressions similar to the ones they have plastered on their faces when their dog starts digging for a bone in a park.

Lastly of course you should see Dabangg so you don’t feel stupid – everyone else has seen it; you should see it so you know what we’re talking about; and you should see it, because there’s not too many movies we recommend as strongly as we’re recommending this one.

From the October 2010 issue of FHM India.