Let’s get a few things out of the way first.
Director Anurag Basu’s ambitious fantasy adventure, Jagga Jasoos starring Ranbir Kapoor, scooped three awards for its background score, choreography and special effects making it a dominant force in the technical awards category at International Indian Film Academy’s 2018 Iifa Rocks event in Bangkok’s Siam Niramit Theatre on Friday night.
Rajkumar Rao and Ayushmann Khurrana’s romantic comedy Bareilly Ki Barfi went home with the Best Screenplay, while Khuranna’s comedy Shubh Mangal Savdhaan won the award for Best Dialogues.
There were no obvious snubs this year in the technical categories as the winners were truly deserving.
Khurrana, who was in charge of hosting along with Kartik Aaryan, had every reason to celebrate since his two films won that night.
But what Khurrana shouldn’t ideally feel particularly proud about is his hosting prowess on Friday night. The Iifa Rocks event, which is a night that blends music, fashion and honours technical awards in Bollywood all at once, was in dire need of editing. The hosting material that these two regular blokes, who tried their best to inject humour into some terrible jokes, were abysmal.
To put it mildly, the jokes that they cracked were borderline sexist and lame. Imagine this: as a part of their interactive gig as hosts, they challenged actors seated on the front row to replace the word ‘dil’ (which means hearts) with ‘chaddi’ (underwear) from popular Hindi songs.
The tux-clad blokes, who seemed to be high on energy, hopped down from the stage into the star-studded audience and asked the likes of Varun Dhawan and music composer Pritam Chakraborty to sing songs that swapped dil with chaddi. It didn’t land well, judging by the contorted faces of the stars and the lack of reaction such as claps and hoots from the audiences. It was such a juvenile feat and was painful to witness.
If that wasn’t bad enough, they multiplied their sin by claiming that this enterprising challenge was only for the men in Bollywood as they just couldn’t imagine the actresses would crack the same blah-and-bland joke.
Actress Shraddha Kapoor didn’t take that lying down, fortunately. She called them out and defiantly asked ‘why couldn’t girls sing with the word chaddi’ and went on to sing robustly without any compunction.
She took one for the women’s team and we are eternally grateful for that.
But if we lived in a fair world, this terrible joke should never have made the cut to the Iifa Rocks event. But since it did, the least they could do was not add a sexist flavour to it.
Actress Konkana Sen Sharma, who made her directorial debut with the spectacular film Death In The Gunj, even asked them candidly why they were going on and on about chaddi. Swipes were also taken at the vertically-challenged folks. Aaryan boxing with a Thai dwarf commoner for cheap thrills wasn’t appealing to watch.
Either we have run out of good material to make award nights compelling, or the option that any faux pas can be edited before it reaches our television screens gives them a false sense of security.
What these genial and good-looking hosts seem to be forgetting is that the audiences in Bangkok who witnessed their over-inflated hosting were left with a terrible headache.
At one point, nearing midnight, actors such as Varun Dhawan took over the microphone and urged them to announce the winners quickly so that everybody could go home and hit the bed. Even Bollywood, with all its razzle-dazzle, loses its sheen if it crosses midnight.
While it’s commendable that Aryan and Khurrana kept their spirits high by cracking one irrelevant joke after the other, it was unfortunate that they didn’t use the platform to call out award ceremonies that were losing its credibility or the terrible films that were rolled out in Bollywood last year, or the missteps by famous people. Instead, they hoped that below-the-belt digs would do the trick.
Here’s hoping the main Iifa Awards ceremony on Sunday cleans up good.
