HUM DONO RANGEEN

Golden era of Bollywood had many memorable dreams on celluloid and one such super hit with memorable music was 'Hum Dono' (1961). Last week saw new color version release of 'Hum Dono Rangeen'. Dev Anand was very excited about it and so was the industry as every stalwart of hindi film cinema was present at the premier.

But box office results were poor and at many places shows were cancelled due to pathetic attendance.This dismal performance looks even more bleak when you know that there was no major release last weekend except few small budget off beat affairs. This flop show was surprising because in past 'Mughal-E-Azam' did fairly well when it was released in 2004 in color version and all time hits like 'Sholay' and 'DDLJ' always had good repeat runs at box office.

There are few possibilities which contributed to this debacle. Foremost was the low publicity of the release as there was no build up or promotion prior to release of the movie. Also febuary is never a favorable month at the box office unless film carries a huge star cast as board exams are round the corner and cricket fever is catching up. It should had been released in festive seasons on the lines of 'Mughal-E-Azam' which was released in 2004 diwali. And above all,'Hum Dono' is a classic but it is no where near 'Mughal-E-Azam','Mother India' or 'Sholay' in terms of larger than life scale and cult following. 'HumDono' was more an all time musical hit with immortal numbers like 'Abhi Na Jao Chod Kar' and 'Main Zindagi Ka Saath Nibhata'.   Even general opinion after watching colored version was not very positive as people complained about poor color mixing. 

Anyways 'Hum Dono' will remain a classic of our cinematic history but its a learning for future that neither all classics have cult following nor all experiments are successful.