Bollywood offers myriad stories & sequences including in refashioning original Hollywood movies for the Hindi audiences for diversion, however, there has also been a crop of official remakes in recent times, such as Bang Bang, Players, just to name a few. There was a moment in one such recent movie with Saif Ali Khan called Chef that caught my attention and which was probably missed by many viewers.
Chef is an official remake of that Jon Favreau 2014 classic of the same name which I probably watched a couple of times, about an uncompromising chef who quits his respectable job at a prestigious Los Angeles restaurant to go back to his roots and rediscover the happiness in his cooking. The remake follows the same course, save for Roshan Kalra (Saif) who embarks on his path to enlightenment from the USA to pristine Kerala, but alas, the movie loses the plot somewhere between Goa, Delhi, and that “Rottza” whatever, that people thronged to relish. In all the munching, the heartwarming, ‘slice-of-the-life’ delight which Favreau’s Chef provided was clearly lost its way in its Indic avatar raising more questions than amusement. As an instance, why do all of Bollywood’s ‘reputed’ chefs come from the UK (Cheeni Kum) or ‘Umrika’ and not from the Taj Mahals or the Oberois in India while experiencing the boredom of metro-life, moving to a rural place in India and rediscovering their true passion? I suppose it’s not prudent to decode Bollywood’s logic of life so regardless I just enjoy or dislike the show.
The Dil Chahta Hai Connection
In the second half, there’s a fleeting mention of the Saif Ali Khan classic Dil Chahta Hai when Roshan Kalra recalls an embarrassing moment to his assistant Nuzrool in Goa about visiting the place twenty years ago with his two friends and getting robbed. Saif’s actually talking about his character Sameer visiting Goa (with Akash & Sid) and succumbing to his desires for Kristine who plunders his personal belongings in an outlandish situation. His mention of 20 years is a tribute to 2001, the year when Dil Chahta Hai was released! Chef may have truly gone south but this tiny detail provided the only bright spot for me.
It’s an account through the eyes of a lonesome lass with a secret penchant for creativity and her companion dog as the only one who knows & values her innate talent and who eventually albeit creatively, of course, forces her to come out of her hiding. In all this, I was astonished to see how Apple has taken fancy to Pixar-inspired storytelling for the first time! The past commercials from Apple have resorted to numerous graphical treatments in making visually stylised product campaigns though animation not being a prominent theme on that list so far. While the tagline ‘Share Your Gifts’ is a beautiful wordplay for acknowledging not just the sentiment of giving in the festive season but also for energising & sharing creative material using the power of Apple’s great products. A company that has always championed the cause of the creative arts community worldwide yet again communicating its unequivocal stand with this fabulous ad, and dare I say, the folks at Pixar would be so pleased to see their artistic journey as an inspiration for the design of this spot. Also, there’s a moral for everyone that creativity is yearning to come to life only if you could use your artful imagination, so go ahead, surprise yourself and your peers. “Don’t hide” and dream on!