Rise, Fall, and the Resurgence of Lord Bobby

 Who thought Bobby Deol would go viral, not as a subject of memes but as an actor in an actual hit movie? I still remember reading the review of a movie in 2002 that emphatically stated that Bobby Deol tried every kind of hero role available in Bollywood and spectacularly failed in all of them. After that, he acted in another two dozen movies and gave a couple of hits like Ajnabee and Humraaz. But most were misses. Until he hit box office gold with a twenty-minute role in Animal.

It felt weird when one fine day I was bombarded with a barrage of memes, reels, and videos of a man from the old memories of a distant past that your brain had already labelled as irrelevant anymore, dancing with a peg on his head to the tunes of a song in a foreign language. It felt good to see it. And then see it some more, and then many more times. Also, to piggyback on his sudden popularity, Prime Video released a package of many of his old films that I remembered watching. So I sat down and watched a few of them on consecutive days, and these are my thoughts on the phenomenon of Lord Bobby.

There was a time when Bobby lit the screen with oodles of style. His debut movie, Barsaat, was produced by his dad, Dharmendra, who ensured that he got the best launch pad. Helmed by Rajkumar Santoshi, one of the best working directors of the era, Barsaat was a safe-zone romantic action movie that catapulted him to stardom. The movies that were released next, like Gupt, Kareeb, and Soldier, further solidified his stand.

What happened then? Bobby was never a good actor. Armed with just a few expressions in his arsenal and a face that exuded an innocent, boyish charm, there were limitations in his range as an actor. His brother Sunny has a similar boyish look to him, but like a magician, he swaps it for intense and fierce rage. So we see him wooing Meenakshi Seshadri, looking all cute and earnest, singing 'Nigahon ne cheda hain' in one scene and roaring 'kuthon ka sahara lena chod de Katya' in the next, showing off his 'dhai kilo' arms in Ghatak. Bobby never went for it. He banked on his innocence alone to carry him forward. Even in Soldier, which was a revenge movie, action scenes relied more on comedy.

But, even with limited talent, one could work hard and come on top, like Saif. After a lull in his career, Saif got a chance, grabbed it, and gave it his all, portraying the character of Iago in the Vishal Bharadwaj movie Omkara, which is based on Othello. More than the nuances of the character, it was the hard work and sincerity of Saif that made that portrayal special. He used these acquired qualities to tackle his later movies and became a formidable entity in the movie business.

But Bobby never tried hard. You could see him giving his all until Soldier, but then it looked like he stopped caring. He was essentially sleepwalking while portraying his later roles. Is it because he thought that the thrust he had built up until then would carry him forward? Or that he never cared to 'sharpen his saws'? Or was it the fault of movie makers who couldn't make out his utility? Following Soldier, a spate of horrible movies followed, though one such movie, Badal, managed to become a hit, until Ajnabee came.

Ajnabee is an interesting movie. After Shah Rukh Khan successfully portrayed villain roles in the beginning of his career before transitioning into a romantic star, there was a long period where heroes would never dare try out greyish shades for their characters. When Sanjay Dutt returned from jail, he tried to bring back the anti-hero into mainstream cinema, with movies like Vaastav achieving success. Ajnabee was a profitable movie in which a successful actor went on to portray a plainly evil role with no justification for his actions. Soon, Humraaz followed. Both movies became milestones for the actors who played the negative characters.

What was common to these films? The presence of Bobby. He was the hero in both of them—the good guy who got cheated and was on the verge of losing it all, fighting hard to reclaim it all. There is a lesson that Sunny Deol learned a few years ago doing Darr against Shah Rukh: being a good guy in a movie that has an antihero can be disastrous. Sunny, with his immense talent and screen presence, as well as a trend that favours good guys, could overcome the setback and churn out many more hits. But Bobby unfortunately chose to be the good guy in a bad time. The industry was exploring grey shades, and Bobby never tried to capitalise on and co-explore this trend. Soon, he slowly plodded towards the oblivion of irrelevance.

After a few instances of personal meltdowns and troubles, as he himself admitted in recent interviews, he decided to work again and got hold of a few projects. This time he shed off his good guy persona and donned the evil with vengeance. Thus came Ashram, Love Hostel, and finally Animal, a dream comeback and an answer for all his detractors. Only one comment on the incredible success: 'der aye, magar durust aye'.