Mixed week for Bollywood as box office fights a flop with an almost hit film

They did it once it didn’t work. They did it again and it again didn’t work. Now they’ve done it Phir Se. Unfortunately, history repeated itself. It still didn’t work.

We are talking about Yamla Pagla Deewana Phir Se. The third installment in the Yamla Pagla Deewana franchise hardly collected any money on its opening day and the Deol clan failed to pack a punch at the box office.

They have tried all sorts of slapstick jokes but nothing worked. Sunny Deol even tried to create continuity with the famous ‘Dhai kilo ka Haath’ but that didn’t help their case. Yamla Pagla Deewana that has even got zero stars from some critics should come to terms with the fact that if they had to choose between to be and not to be they should go for the latter.

But then someone had to make up for the mess the Deols created at the box office. So Rajkummar Rao stepped in to bat for Bollywood. Since bare comedy couldn’t quite make people laugh, Rao offered his share by doing it a little differently. His film Stree released this week.

Rajeev Masand describes the film as a very unusual film. According to him 'It marries elements of horror, broad comedy, dark humor, and social satire to create a cocktail'.

Now, cocktails never fail. Do they? Well, they mostly don’t and this didn’t too. The film has got some good reviews, mostly 3 stars and above and made some money too. Now that’s what you call a good cocktail right? Sugar, spice, and everything nice. To make it better, the film is making some money as well.

Moving beyond the borders - brothers from the Chinese mainland are enjoying Salman Khan’s 2016-release Sultan. The film had a solid release with around 10000 screens and 36000 screenings but there was also competition from Mission Impossible - Fallout which also released on the same day.

The film did average business at the Chinese box office on its opening day and made about Rs 6.5 crore.

That wraps the week for Bollywood declaring Rajkummar Rao a clear winner with the most brownie points in his kitty.