Ranbir Kapoor birthday special! 4 underrated and largely unseen outings of the 'Rockstar' actor

Ranbir Kapoor Picture Courtesy: AFP

Ranbir Kapoor's cinema is full of irony. He says how he was often asked to create more commercial characters and films that define your typical Hindi film hero. Two of his most commercial outings, ‘Saawariya', which was also his Bollywood debut, and ‘Besharam', his most larger-than-life role yet, were box-office duds. What we see as niche were huge hits and the names read ‘Wake Up Sid', ‘Rockstar', and ‘Barfi'.

In a career that will turn 14 this year, Ranbir Kapoor has seldom abided by the set parameters, has always believed in creating cinema he's excited by, and the end results have swung between fulfilling and frustrating. At least four of his films deserved a lot more:

Rocket Singh- Salesman Of The Year (2009)

The biggest breather was not to see a Sardar hero being reduced to comic relief. At first, he is, but for his employees and his boss, and the humiliation is certainly no laughing business for anyone who has been employed in such toxic and tumultuous office spaces. For once, YRF looked beyond gorgeousness and put their gaze on ordinariness. Shimit Amin's directorial was a reality check given by a production house known for creating gratifying and impressionable worlds of fantasy.

Bombay Velvet (2015)

Anurag Kashyap's dream saw no bounds, and sadly no takers too. The period drama had scale and sweep, and also some thunderous sounds of music. Fact that a filmmaker like Kashyap could aim for a canvas this huge wasn't digestible to many. It was written off scathingly right on day one, leaving the film not only underrated but also unwanted.

Tamasha (2015)

A beard is often used as the ultimate tool and representation of sadness and brood. Here, Imtiaz Ali gives his hero a full grown beard at his happiest phase and shoots him clean shaven when he's at his ebb. It was a nice twist in a story about what else but rediscovery and rebirth. Everything in Ali's cinema is metaphorically done, and 'Tamasha' is no exception. An exhausted office employee travels to Corsica (an unheard locale before 2015) to be what he wants to be, meets a girl and they refuse to get to know each other. Destiny takes care of that and ultimately love happens. Repeating what Kapoor says in the film, girl says the boy is not what he seems to be, boy goes berserk and does strange things. It was all poetic, the songs and the dialogues and even the performances. It showed how the world needs more Dons than Veds.

Jagga Jasoos (2017)

This was sweeter than Anurag Basu and Ranbir Kapoor's maiden collaboration, ‘Barfi'. It had a mix of music, romance, adventure, drama, thrill. It had a mix of Tintin, Bollywood, and Disney. Basu has described this maddening world as the world of magical realism. It was a true blue musical from start to finish, it had a stammering hero who yodeled while communicating and so did everyone around him to further fuel the audacity of Basu. The lovely staging of the frames, the endearing compositions of Pritam, and Ranbir Kapoor's heartfelt performance made 'Jagga Jasoos' a wild, wicked adventure that's truly for the ages.

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