Bangladesh made Gunday lowest rated film on IMDb: What about Mary Kom or Dhoom:3?

Ranveer Singh fans, brace for this. Get a glass of cold water, sit down on something that won’t topple easily and quickly refresh the whatever you know about anger management in your head. Now, for the news. Gunday is the worst rated movie ever on IMDb. True story. To give you a sense of how bad that rating is, the same list has put Love Story 2050, 99 places above Gunday. This despite a generous display of Ranveer Singh’s bronzed, oiled abs, shoulders and arms.

Though Gunday is hardly an example of cinematic excellence, obviously it wasn’t as bad as the complete disaster Love Story 2050. In fact, Gunday had been rated lower than Ram Gopal Varma’s Aag (rank 23) and Sajid Naidiadwala’s Himmatwala (rank 12).

Though it first broke in May, given that we were occupied with a certain Mr Modi, it missed most of us. A Google search reveals that since no new list has been compiled yet, Gunday continues to be the worst rated film ever on IMDb. However, our faith in Ranveer Singh’s muscles were restored when we came across a curious little story on Five Thirty Eight which revealed the reason behind Gunday’s dismal ratings.

“Gunday offended a huge, sensitive, organized and social-media-savvy group of people who were encouraged to mobilize to protest the movie by giving it the lowest rating possible on IMDb,” writes David Goldenberg.

The alliance of bloggers who are an important part of Bangladesh’s Gonojagoron Moncho, which demanded severe punishment for the perpetrators of war crimes in 1971 war. The same people took offence at Gunday’s sloppy research which made the film refer to the 1971 War of Liberation as the Indo-Pak war. In an interview, Priyanka Chopra had even referred to the Bangladesh war as the one which led to the partition of India.

While it is true that the country has the right to be offended by such a blatant massacre of its history, expecting historical nuance from Bollywood is like expecting a traffic jam-free Mumbai. On that note here’s a list of five recent films (of many many films) that could be taken to the cleaners for slipping up on history, fact and questioning basic human intelligence.

You are free to add yours in the comments section!

1. Jab Tak Hai Jaan: Now the Indian Army should be legitimately offended by how Yash Chopra’s Jab Tak Hai Jaan made high security camps along the LoC look as accessible as Marine Drive in the monsoons. While Army personnel are shown defusing land mines, Anushka Sharma, who plays a journalist, is shown loitering around with a camera, much like a teenager trying to find the perfect selfie lighting in a pub washroom. In fact, she even sets off a mine during her journalistic pursuit, but is saved by SRK’s dolphin-like reflexes as he sweeps her away from the said mine.

2. Mary Kom: In Priyanka Chopra’s film, Kom’s first brush with a boxing opponent comes in the way of a man, probably modelled on the Mountain from Game of Thrones. He growls, snarls and beats people to pulp. Kom, of course, in true Sunny Deol tradition of machismo, stands up to him. The film also shows that Kom took up the fight for money. However, as this interview with Kom’s husband Onler reveals  , Mary, in real life, fought no such boxer. Nor did she take up boxing for money. But who cares when there’s a rags to riches story, that gives a blind Nirupa Roy from Amar Akbar Antony a run for her money, to be told at the boxer’s expense?

3. Bhaag Milkha Bhaag: Not only did the makers of the film shuffle around the events of the athletes’s life (the running event in Pakistan actually occurred before the Olympics, the films shows the opposite), there were several factual inconsistencies in it. Given that the film was touted as a biopic one would have expected the makers to fall back on research, but they instead decided to place their bets on Farhan Akhtar’s eight back abs. The latter actually paid off, if the film’s success is anything to go by. The Hindustan Times notes, “When Milkha is released from jail in the 1950s, the year written on the form is 2013. The film shows electronic railway signals; Milkha rides a 2012 model motorbike.”

4. Dhoom:3: Aamir Khan hides his twin brother from the whole wide world. Please note here that the brother is a human being, not a  poster of Schwarzenegger’s chest Khan loves to bits - though you might think so from how the Bollywood star’s bosom looks like in the film. Therefore, the brother, logically, can’t be conveniently shoved under the bed, rolled up and carried in duffel bags and consequently hidden for 30 years of his life. However, Aamir Khan manages to do exactly that, we fail to understand how. Twins and Abbas Mustan must protest and assert that unlike what Dhoom:3 says, they have more individuality than the two biscuits of an Oreo.

5. Kick: Salman Khan comfortably saunters across a rail track with a speeding train just a foot away, Salman Khan rides, sorry , flies a bicycle out of the top floor of a skyscraper. Salman Khan out-cycles SUVs. Salman Khan blows up a helicopter while driving a double decker bus. Rajinikath should be very, very offended and sue him for copyright infringement.