BRIEF is beautiful: (From top) Stills from Honeymoon Travels Private Ltd, Loins of Punjab Presents, Bheja Fry and Eklavya

Debojit Mukherjee, a 20-something management trainee, used to hate the idea of watching an Indian film in a theatre. He said he had no time for the roughly three-hour exercise. “It just takes too long,” he said. But that was before he went and saw the film Bheja Fry. At 95 minutes, it was a movie after Mukherjee’s own heart — short, funny and without the regulation song and dance sequences that carry on and on.

In an era of life lived in quick time, instant gratification rules. And whether it is cricket or films, the shorter, it seems, is the better. So while high-on-adrenaline Twenty20 cricket is the game of choice for most youngsters today, movies too are taking the short route to success.

Consider this. Bheja Fry: 95 minutes (hit); Loins of Punjab Presents: 90 minutes (hit); Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd: 108 minutes (hit). Salaam-e-Ishq: three hour plus (flop); Jaan-e-Mann, nearly three hours (flop). Clearly, the Twenty20 generation has a message for our film-makers — keep ’em tight, we don’t have time to watch long-winded stuff.

“Everything is truncated these days — whether it is cricket or a movie. In a way it is a social phenomenon and to cater to this young and restless audience we have to make movies that are short and crisp,” says Sunil Doshi, producer of the hit comedy Bheja Fry.

Actor director Rajat Kapoor too feels that the sensibility of the film-going public has changed of late. “The idea that a movie should be two-and-a-half hours long, with the normal song and dance sequences and the usual masala, is not acceptable any longer. The success of some of the shorter movies is ample indication of that.” Kapoor’s first film Mixed Doubles was of 91 minutes’ duration and his forthcoming film Mitya, starring Naseeruddin Shah and Arshad Warsi, is going to be 107 minutes long.

Manish Acharya, another votary of short, pithy Hindi movies, and whose film Loins of Punjab Presents has been lauded by critics, confesses that he didn’t really try to second-guess what the audience would like best — a long or a short movie. “I just wanted to make a movie that I liked, and hoped that there would be many people like me,” he says.

However, everyone agrees that making a film somewhat shorter than usual is not a guarantee for success. Ultimately, content is king. Just as the longer version, the shorter variety too sinks or swims by virtue of its content. “If you want more eyeballs and footfalls, the content has to be dynamic and short movies have been providing that,” avers Doshi.

Sagar Ballary, director of Bheja Fry, elucidates, “All the ingredients that make a good movie — whether they are sharp dialogues or smart production values — also go into making a good short film. There is not much of a difference, except that one has to be a bit adventurous and back oneself as a film-maker.

“What distinguishes these films from many of the mainstream potboilers is a crackling script and an underlying faith in the intelligence of the audience. For instance, Anuvab Pal, one of the scriptwriters of Loins, was fairly confident that the movie would be lapped up by discerning cine-goers and that there were enough of them around to turn it into a decent hit. “The film is set in New Jersey, so we thought that perhaps Indians in the US might turn to it in particular. But we were equally hopeful about urban India,” he says. Clearly, that hope has not been belied as audiences here have loved the movie too.

Movies like Loins... have also given the confidence to small film-makers to think beyond multiplexes and metros. “With Bheja Fry we broke many myths, one of them being that small budget movies can do well only in the metros. Bheja Fry was successful even in small centres,” says Ballary.

Film distributors too agree that small-budget shorter films have shown surprising resilience and are doing well almost everywhere. “Previously, a particular form of movie was designated as a multiplex release. But I think this needs to change now, as we have been successful in showing movies like Bheja Fry and Loins even in single theatres across the country,” says Ranjan Singh, general manager of the Delhi-based PVR Cinemas, which distributes films and also owns multiplexes in various parts of the country.

Significantly, big-banner movies seem to have taken a cue from the success of these shorter films. “Just take a look at some of the recent big-budget releases: Gandhi: My Father was 110 minutes, Nishabd was 110 minutes, Eklavya was 100 minutes. They point to the fact that film-makers realise that it is not the length but the content that matters,” says Singh.

That said, it is not as if normal-length Hindi movies have faded into oblivion. “If you look at Chak De! India, Heyy Babyy and others, they were of conventional duration but they did very well. So everybody is not under pressure to make only shorter version films. But, yes, you will definitely see more such movies in future,” says Vikas Syal, regional general manager, INOX, Calcutta.

However, one matter of concern for film-makers is that all the successful short films have been comedies. “If people start liking small budget comedies, serious cinema might suffer,” says Rajat Kapoor.

The likes of Debojit Mukherjee, though, want just one thing from film-makers — comedy or tragedy, let it be good cinema, and please, let it be nice and short!