Why should MBA students watch movies? This question was unexpectedly answered by the movie Dabangg. But more on this later.

Dabangg is one movie which is difficult to dislike, just like its protagonist Chulbul Pandey. You may not be a fan of Rajnikant’s sunglasses-rotation act in Tamil movies, and you may not be a fan of Salman Khan either, but when our hero quite unassumingly tries a Rajnikant act in Dabangg, in spite of yourself you excuse it and perhaps even outright enjoy it.

So here’s a movie that has no secret agenda up its sleeve, and perhaps that was why the audiences loved it – irrespective of whether they watched it in a multiplex or in a single-screen theatre. (Anyone reading this remember the time when you did not have to specify that a movie theatre was “single-screen” and not a multiplex?) In fact, the best part about Dabangg is that it does not moralise like 3 Idiots did, and thus escapes being hypocritical.

The character Chulbul Pandey is, for reasons that vary according to the viewer, very likeable. He is a “macho-man”, as you would expect any Salman Khan role to be. But he is also kind, almost harmless – he hurts only villains, although he might pretend to hurt his brother or father. “The bhai who never grew up seems to have finally become the boy who can do no wrong” is what Kaveree Bamzai has to say in the India Today issue of November 1, 2010.

Chulbul Pandey thus has an element of dabangg in him – a spirit of fearlessness. (Now dabangg was one word that improved both my Hindi vocabulary and my humility with respect to it…) This element of audacity is what led my group in a class on Advertising to suggest that Mahindra and Mahindra present its newly launched bikes with the tagline “there’s a bit of dabangg in everyone.” And why not? Yeah, it sounds quite clichéd now, in hindsight, but if marketing is critical for movies, then so are movies for marketing!

Getting back to the point. You know that a movie is made to entertain when the hero’s brother is called makkhi and there is no reel sorrow when the heroine’s father dies. As for real sorrow, Dabangg does not care to tread into that hazardous territory as Taare Zameen Par does. For that matter, it does not even reach the pseudo-real sorrow that Salman Khan himself portrays when talking to the sky in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. The songs are catchy, in spite of not making any claims to greatness. They were there because any Bollywood movie needs songs to succeed, and like all other features of the movie, they willingly defer to the hero.

The song Munni badnaam hui is interesting from a marketing point of view. The movie-makers conducted an unintended ‘product placement’, to use a technical term, by using the brand name Zandu in the song. Initially, Emami who owns the brand sued producer Arbaaz Khan for using their trademark. Now, unsurprisingly, Zandu balm sales have soared largely as a result of the controversy. (Read the whole story here.) Not bad, eh? Free publicity, when you were thinking of it the least.

There is a Malayalam saying which can be loosely translated as “The curse by Urvasi became a blessing for Arjuna.” Those familiar with the Mahabharata would understand. To an extent, this has taken place for Emami though it is not very clear whether being featured in a song starring Salman Khan is a curse or a blessing.

All in all, a feel-good entertainer that starts off by setting the right expectations and matching them, instead of setting expectations too high and then barely reaching there. Who knows, this might be what the audience really wants. If such a thing as “what the audience wants” exists.

<Personal opinion disclaimer applies.>