A review of Bollywood's best commercial entertainers, historical and horror films of 2008.
Aamir Khan's Ghajini, Shahrukh Khan's Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi are the Blockbusters of 2008
- Ghajini smashed all box office records to emerge the highest grossing Bollywood hit in recent times. An emotional action thriller, it was a remake of a Southern film of the same name and inspired from the Hollywood Memento. Southern heroine Asin made her entry and was hailed in Bollywood. Jiah Khan plays a medical student who helps the hero trace his girlfriend's killer. Ghajini is also testimonial to superstar Aamir Khan's marketing skills as he developed a new look (a clean shaven look with a muscular tattooed body to match)
- After a relatively slow start, ShahRukh Khan delivered another blockbuster hit in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi with newcomer Anoushka Sharma. The superstars plays a simple engineer Surinder Sahni married to a lively vivacious girl (Taani) who quickly grows bored. She participates in a dance reality show, and does not realize that her partner is her husband who undergoes a makeover to please her. Although critics pointed out obvious flaws in the storyline (a dissatisfied wife who fails to recognize her husband in disguise), SRKs star power came to the rescue.
- The third blockbuster of the year was the college romance Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. It introduced Aamir Khan's nephew Imran Khan, opposite another Southern heroine Genelia D Souza who till then was relatively obscure on the Hindi scene.
- Other notable superhits were the Akhay Kumar-Katrina Kaif comedy Singh is King, and the multistarrer Abbas-Mustan directed Race. Phoonk and 1920 were successful horror films.
Despite its long run time and certain weaknesses in the script, this love story of a Mughal emperor and a Rajput Hindu princess had a soul. The Hrithik Roshan Aishwarya Rai starrer faced stiff opposition from local religious and ethnic groups upon release for its representation of history, but nonetheless went on to become a superhit in the domestic market. It was widely covered by the Western press and did blockbuster business in North America.
The Best Movie of 2008 is A Wednesday
Critics generally acknowledged A Wednesday to be the best Bollywood movie of 2008. The tale of an ordinary man's fight with terrorism was also fairly successful commercially. It starred Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher in lead roles with Neeraj Pandey as the director. However it received relatively few awards that suggests a bias in the prevalent award system.
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