Not all masala films, starring big names and helmed by successful directors, can weave magic at the box-office. RASCALS proves this perspective right. The ha-ha-thon, expected to set the box-office ablaze, started rather impressively on the auspicious occasion of Dashehra [Thursday], but went downhill from Friday onwards. It was a drastic fall: Friday was lower than Thursday, while Saturday was lower than Friday. Sunday too was much lower than expected.
Despite everything going in its favor -- piping hot star cast, great promotion, no major opposition in the week of release -- RASCALS didn't get the mandate of the paying public. Let's analyze.
The word of mouth is negative, which explains why the business declined considerably during its opening weekend itself. Oh yes, comedies are the flavor of the season and not just David, but also Sanju and Ajay have an enviable track record as far as laughathons go, but the feedback was extremely negative, which resulted in a sharp decline in box-office receipts. It only goes to prove [yet again] that box-office can be most unpredictable. What we, the industry people, may consider as a foolproof genre [comedy] to lure audience in hordes, isn't fail-safe or dependable enough, actually.
What comes as a surprise is the fact that David Dhawan has made a career out of making comedies. The success ratio is amongst the best in the business. But he hasn't been lucky with RASCALS.
The other two films, LOVE BREAKUPS ZINDAGI and SOUNDTRACK, didn't make noise either. LOVE BREAKUPS ZINDAGI fared marginally better at a handful of plexes, that's about it! Agree, films like LOVE BREAKUPS ZINDAGI don't embark on a flying start, but pick up with word of mouth. In most cases, the escalation in business is evident from Friday evening/Saturday onwards. In this case, the opening numbers were so low that a big jump was essential if the distributors had to breathe easy. But the weekend total and the business on weekdays was insufficient.
SOUNDTRACK won rave reviews and the few who watched it found the film interesting, but, unfortunately, the numbers are shockingly low.
