A few days before he left for Hyderabad to shoot Himmatwala, Sajid Khan told me, “Take it from me, this will be the biggest hit of Ajay Devgn’s career. It will be a blockbuster.” Whatever his boast, he had pulled it off, strictly commercially, with his earlier films (Heyy Babyy and the two Housefulls). So I shrugged, “I don’t doubt that.”

“It will be a blockbuster hit,” Sajid repeated. “But it won’t be a good film,” he added. “I don’t doubt that either,” I replied dryly. I got a dirty look for that one.

As it transpires, we were both wrong on the first count: Himmatwala is not a blockbuster hit, it is not even a hit. And to think producer Vashu Bhagnani had wooed Sajid Khan away from Sajid Nadiadwala with an obscenely huge cheque (reportedly Rs 20 crore)! Coincidentally, that figure is approximately the amount that is being bandied around as the estimated loss of the film.

A film distributor who keeps tabs on the daily collections of all Hindi films wondered why anybody would be bothered about the box office performance of Himmatwala considering the verdict on it was out on Day One itself. “It’s another Tees Maar Khan,” he wisecracked. “That was made by the sister (Farah Khan). This one’s by the brother.”

If Tees Maar Khan got it in the neck because Farah’s husband Shirish Kunder (who wrote, produced and practically made the film under her name) is so immensely unpopular, the fall of Himmatwala is being applauded because Sajid Khan is so renowned for his pomposity. Most of his own colleagues feel that Sajid had it coming while critics are unanimous that he couldn’t possibly keep getting away with such inanely offensive fare every time.

The content apart, Sajid has won no brownie points from the film industry he works in. One producer still seethed over Sajid’s behaviour at an awards function that he was compering, where an unknown Neeraj Pandey’s film, A Wednesday had won many awards. The producer explained that when Neeraj, dressed in casuals and slippers, had gone up to accept his many awards, Sajid had remarked that he would now perhaps be in a position to dress better. That wasn’t wit, it was low-level nastiness to someone who was just stepping into showbiz. But thereafter, Neeraj proved his mettle by making Special 26 which again fetched good reviews and impressive commercial returns while Sajid has had to face failure with Himmatwala. Just deserts?

While licking his wounds, Sajid has apparently accused the media of being against him because he didn’t hold a press show for Himmatwala. If that were true, Ramesh and Kumar Taurani of Tips don’t have press shows either for any of their films but that hasn’t hurt the success of Race and Race 2. And since when have reviews really mattered to the commercial run of a Hindi entertainer?

There is an older generation that cites another reason for the poor performance of Sajid’s film. The 1983 Himmatwala was also no classic in its time but had run very successfully and had launched Sridevi in Hindi cinema. While Jeetendra and Sri had done their bit in the dance sequences, with his famous white shoes and her energetic sensuality, the accolades had all been won by Amjad Khan and Kader Khan for their perfect comic villainy. “The film had run because of the chemistry between Amjad Khan and Kader Khan,” recalled 1970s actor Anil Dhawan who had a small part to play in the new Himmatwala. But Sajid turned it into a routine Ajay Devgn show which was not the winning ingredient of the original film. To top it, Devgn’s dancing skills were non-existent and Mahesh Manjrekar found Amjad Khan a tough act to follow.

Coincidentally, Amjad Khan’s second son Seemaab (a fine cricketer) was Sajid Khan’s AD (assistant director) on the new Himmatwala. The inside info is that Sajid had also tapped Amjad’s older son, Shadaab Khan, to reprise Shakti Kapoor’s role. When Shadaab turned down, it was whittled and made quite effete. Shekhar Suman’s son, Adhyayan, finally did that no-impact role in the Devgn film.

Whatever the reasons for the dull performance of Himmatwala, Hindi films are going to take a backseat for the next two months as the IPL gets underway. But, like Himmatwala, the opening ceremony was a dampener. After two outstanding acts (for example, the female drummers who put on quite a show along with a violist), it petered out into routine Bollywood once Deepika-Katrina-SRK took over and the ceremony soon resembled a tired film awards function. Surely India is capable of culture that goes beyond Hindi film stars?

Bharathi S. Pradhan is editor, The Film Street Journal