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Ten reasons why Salman Khan's Jai Ho didn't work
Sohail Khan-directed Jai Ho failed to create the buzz Salman Khan's previous movies had with unprecedented success. Here's why.
Has invincibility left the building?
Salman Khan’s Jai Ho has taken an uncharacteristic beating at the box office, and here are ten probable reasons why the film didn't go down well.
No song
There’s been no Munni to ogle, nothing to set the dancefloor alight, or shake a belt-buckle to.
Sajid-Wajid couldn't come up with any sizzle for their Jai Ho soundtrack and the public remained disinterested from the start.
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No Girl
The audiences like Salman with stunners like Katrina Kaif, Kareena Kapoor and, in recent times, Sonakshi Sinha.
There might not be anything wrong per se with newcomer Daisy Shah, but its unlikely her presence would provide incentive to people already jaded by Salman’s films.
Angered Muslim fanbase
While Salman Khan has a massive fan following across the country, a large chunk of his fanbase happens to consist of young muslims who identify with their Bhai.
His pleasantries and pictures posing with Narendra Modi might have soured the audience on the film, many feel.
The title
Intriguingly, Jai Ho was originally titled Mental, which might have worked seeing as the public laps up Salman in these single-word films that make their promise loud and clear right from the get-go.
Jai Ho seemed vaguely patriotic but not really so, and the audiences didn't know what to expect.
The fact that Salman kept calling it different from the usual...
For some reason, Bhai kept saying that Jai Ho was not one of his run of the mill films, and that it didn't have the elements people associate with a Salman Khan film.
This clearly acted as quite a deterrent to his fans who flock to theatres exclusively for those very things that make up a Salman Khan film.
...When it really was completely the usual
As for those hopefuls who went to the cinema hoping Salman had shrugged off the Bodyguard/Ready/Wanted mould, there was another shock waiting.
Jai Ho is just more of the same, with bad jokes, Salman shirtlessness, absurdly conceived action sequences.
It’s as formulaic as it gets, really.
Pay it forward
Here’s the thing: In the Kevin Spacey film Pay It Forward, Kevin Spacey doesn't start the good-deed chain of helping three people and asking them to help three other people in turn, and so on.
That naively optimistic idea comes courtesy pre-teen schoolboy Haley Joel Osmont.
In Jai Ho, however, not just is this Salman’s stroke of genius but he’s hailed and applauded for the same.
Bad promos
The first time we saw the Dabanng trailer we braced ourselves.
We knew that come what may, this would be a monster hit.
Since then, Bhai’s films have all looked suitably bombastic, with volume making up for the lack of originality.
This trailer was sadly thanda, and the buzz for the film never really got going.
Sohail Khan
Salman’s worked with directors of questionable pedigree before, but -- as anybody who has seen Jai Ho will attest -- this is one very badly made film and the director, more than anyone else, must shoulder the blame for its failure.
Tacky product
We’re used to slick action films now, and Jai Ho looks so shoddily made it could have been a bad movie from the 90s.
Complete with a shrill Tabu being threatened by cartoonish gangsters, this is a dated and unpolished product people might not want to spend their multiplex money on.