mass mediocrity II: how much sugar would you like in your hot sauce? {where we came from}

Rediff's sequel to their movie endings that readers would like to change page begins on a promising note: someone wants to change Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar's predictable upbeat encouraging ending to a downbeat ending one would associate with what most film viewers term as "art cinema": The end would be that Aamir Khan loses the race and becomes disillusioned with cycling. He feels that in spite of his hard work, nothing happened. He completes his schooling, and since he is good at nothing, he opens a cycle shop. I kinda like this ending, but it doesn't fit with everything the rest of the film was set up for. The film wasn't meant to be a peek into a life of jealousy, competition and defeat. It was supposed to be Breaking Away with songs, oomph and miscellaneous Bollywood spices, despite which it still managed to remain an above-average product (if only because there wasn't any of that dog/blood vegeance and vituperation). The rest of that note takes the film to new frontiers. Literally. It now enters Rocky territory: He hates cycles but still he does it to earn a living. By then, he gets married to Ayesha Jhulka. Then one day, a polio-affected student comes to buy a cycle from his shop, and he sees the harship the kid goes through to learn cycling. He gets inspired by this, and decides to become a champion racer. To add drama, we could make his wife pregnant during the big race. He becomes a champion by winning the Tour de France where Deepak Tijori (his old rival) is also competing!.

Most of the rest of the results hold up to the promise of this initial offering. This is promising. Keep 'em coming. Like that last one on Dhoom. Yes, Point Break was definitely on their minds, but only through its rip-off The Fast and the Furious. The Reeves starrer had more shades than an average blow-'em-up brain-dead chicks-and-wheels noisy action flick that the latter was. But both enjoyed open-ended endings. Who knows, John Abraham probably survived to dish out more pizza. In more ways than one. What a scary thought.