Poonam Pandey’s ‘Nasha’ triumphs at the boxoffice

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra Bhaag Milkha Bhaag continues to dominate the boxoffice even in its third week. As expected the avalanche of Hindi releases this week has suffered a huge blow. All the new releases except to some extent Nasha and Bajatey Raho have opened to extremely poor audience attendance. Manish Tiwary’s Issaq, an extremely interesting take on Romeo & Juliet, did invoke interest in some areas. But the savage reviews in Mumbai did its damage. Says a prominent filmmaker, “The way Issaq was attacked in the reviews it almost seemed like a personal vendetta. And if you read the reviews of Issaq from Mumbai they all seem to make the same points over and over again.” The most shocking boxoffice experience of the week was the rather impressive opening of Nasha. In fact in Bihar and UP Nasha was the only film that survived the Milkha maelstrom. The post-weekend days could prove decisive for Nasha. If it continues to show an upward trend then Poonam Pandey’s movie debut would be considered a success. Speaking on the boxoffice performance of this week’s release trade analyst Taran Adarsh says, “Nasha and Bajatey Raho are slightly better at the boxoffice than the rest. But an excess number of releases have done great harm.” Speaking on the relative success of Nasha Taran comments, “Nasha was riding on the sex and Poonam Pandey. These lured the audiences in. Although ultimately Nasha is more an emotional story than a sex romp, it has some good moments. And the publicity helped.” However Komal Nahata doesn’t think any of this week’s films did well. “I don’t think Nasha has survived the avalanche of releases. If it has stayed somewhat afloat it is because of the sex and sleaze only. Also, its production cost was low. Otherwise all the releases this week are sailing...sorry sinking in the same boat.” So all said and done the real Nasha at the boxoffice this week was the latest edition of the Wolverine franchise. Hugh Jackman proved bigger than Poonam Pandey.