Zee Cinema World Television Premiere: A Flying Jatt

The Super Hero film in an Indian Context is a curious thing, in that its success is one of the things that we weren’t able to replicate in our cinema, nor our super heroes usually measure up to their Hollywood counterparts. One of the reasons, I think, is maybe we like our heroes to be human even if they defy gravity, intelligence and logic with their stunts. The Indian hero didn’t need a cape and a mask to do any of the stunts, and he definitely didn’t need a complex backstory to save pretty damsels from falling off from 50 storeyed buildings. 

Barring the Krrish Franchise, there hasn’t been a successful franchise, heck there isn’t a successful first film to build a franchise upon, even when the directors were somewhat persistent in their attempts at the Super Hero. It might also be that the world saving Super Hero didn’t cut much ice with the locals who wanted their drama with more than a dash of sentiment, theatre and melodrama. Rakesh Roshan’s Krish franchise broke in when the multiplexes came in and brought more money into the genre, and reach to the audiences and the series is hugely popular, successful and profitable for everyone involved.

Turning the Super Hero concept on its head came A Flying Jatt, where the protagonist is constantly taunted and bullied by his peers and the locality, until his mother pronounces him a Super Hero after a chance encounter with the evil and a magic tree. What ensues is a hilarious time as the Flying Jatt, named of his father, comes to terms with his super powers and seems to be getting along alright, even if the cape gets stuck in weird places at all the wrong times. Tiger Shroff takes everything, the bullying and the adulation, that comes with the story in his stride and creates a believable and likeable desi Super Hero, one who makes it very difficult to look away from and one whose success we all root for.

There is a dialogue in the film where one character says “job hi hai, apna hai”, whatever he is and however he looks like, he is one of our own and this is the theme that runs through the film. This is a hero we all know, who has to finish chores at home before he starts saving the world, who is demure with his girlfriend before he realizes his super powers, and plays the clown despite being a super hero, all too convincingly, and he does all this wearing a turban. Bravo. This is the stuff that makes our heroes and the writing by Remo D’Souza and Tushar Hiranandani emphatically checks the boxes, even throwing in the sacrificing elder brother too for good measure, making it a ride we all would want to hop on to. 

If “A Flying Jatt” happens to be the first installment of a franchise, which I want it to be; this serves as a great introduction to the Super Hero. Zee Cinema brings our own Super Hero, A Flying Jatt, to our television screens as the World Television Premiere on 22nd October, 2016 at 8 PM. I for one would watch it all over again and cheer for The Flying Jatt.