‘Chef’: Will this Saif-starrer break the bust of stale Bollywood stereotypes?

For long, Bollywood’s success formula has been trapped in certain sexist, unrealistic, and misogynistic boundaries. Don’t get me wrong here. Masala entertainers, the genre that we alone can be credited for, are as essential to the critically acclaimed ventures. For the past few years, however, the movies of the same genre have been gaining prominence to an extent that those are the only ones minting humongous amount of money, exceptions excluded. But, the ingredients that make a movie hit, superhit, or even a blockbuster, are sometimes painful, and it is even more hurting to know that most of the 100-crore earners are brainless movies that expect you to exercise no part of your mind while watching them.

Is that what we are? Because popularity is marked by the bucks earned at the box office. And most of the movies that have done so suffer from all the cliches that make one cringe, if you belong to the class audience, or even the mass audience, with a sense.

Amongst all this, we have a breezy movie, hitting the screens, this Friday. It is Saif Ali Khan-starrer ‘Chef’, which is a remake of the Hollywood movie of the same name, with considerable revisions done by the makers to give it a delicious Indian twist.

However, what has impressed us even before the release of the movie is that none of the usual stereotypes have been included in it. There is no ‘fair and lovely’ actress who serves as an arm-candy, the star in his late forties is not romancing a woman half his age, and there is no item song or sleaziness inserted just to have that oomph factor. And last, but not the least, it has an actor playing his age, acting his age, and going through all the demons of his age, that plague a normal, ambitious person’s life.

Till now, we have witnessed the heartwarming trailer which tells us that this is going to be a stirring tale of a chef, who leaves his high-profile job abroad, to come back and open a food truck, all the while striving to rebuild his relationship with his inching-towards-teens son (Svar Kamble) and his beautiful estranged wife Radha (Padmapriya Janakiraman). It is the story of a man coming back to mend his heart. If that is what not the audience will connect to; replete with feelings and genuine emotions, what will?

The music of Raghu Dixit may not be something catering to the taste of everyone, but it grows on one after a point, in sync with the theme of the movie. The music, the soothing locales, serve as another point, as these have been created to bring the story alive, unlike cases where locations are forced to fool the aesthetic sense of audience, instead of good content doing its job.

We may not know what the audiences’ verdict on ‘Chef’ may be, but we know for sure that this is one movie which will bring a fresh change in the otherwise sleaze-fest scenario which is accepted in the name of being a ‘family entertainer’. We hope ‘Chef’ turns out to be a game-changer here, breaking the stereotypes, as it has promised to.

Kadambari Srivastava

Grammar Nazi, word weaver, dreamer, bibliophile, technophile, caffeine addict, foodie, shuttling shopaholic! Mash it in a Bollywood recipe and voila! Pushpa, you’ve got her!