Media buildup at full blast.
By Tathagata Mitra
BANGALORE: With less than a week away for its release, Sajid Nadiadwala’s Heropanti is prepping in full scale. With a simplistic plot and lots of glam and panache in its showcasing, Heropanti is the remake of a Telugu film, Parugu, which starred Allu Arjun.
The film is one of many from Bollywood to introduce newcomers lead roles. Hrithik and Amisha’s ‘Kaho Na Pyar Hai’ and Abhishek and Kareena’s ‘Refugee’ more than a decade ago fall under this category, and of course there was Ranbir and Sonam’s ‘Sawariyya’. More recently, KJo’s Student of the Year presented a threesome of new faces in Alia Bhat, Varun Dhawan and Siddharth Malhotra. Arjun Kapoor and Parineeti Chopra’s ‘Ishaqzaade’ is also close to that category, though Parineeti had already played a big supporting role in Ladies vs Ricky Bahl.
‘Heropanti’ stars Tiger Shroff, son of Bollywood star Jackie Shroff, and Kriti Menon, a model turned actor. Tiger, the brave new name and face of Bollywood is the quintessential Bollywood hero: whether it is romancing his girl, beating up the bad guys, or doing a great dance number. The film is not a very distant cousin of the old school Bollywood films, where the hero flirts with the heroine for the first half, the plot produces a villain because of its demand, and then the hero beats up the villain, repeatedly, finally winning both the fights and the girl.
Surprisingly enough, these Bollywood films were in fashion almost 30 years ago, when Tiger’s father Jackie Shroff was a main man of Bollywood.
Heropanti, through its clever promotional techniques has become a name that is recognized everywhere. It’s first single, ‘Whistle Baja’ written by Raftaar, and composed by Manj Musik has become a song that is on everybody’s lips. And the jokes and memes on Tiger Shroff have also put this film in the limelight on social media.
Tiger Shroff, a dancer and martial artist has performed all his stunts for the film. After Akshay Kumar and Vidyut Jamwal, Tiger Shroff joins the line of B-town heroes who perform parkour in a Bollywood film. Tiger’s parkour sequence in the film is supposedly the longest in Bollywood.