“My momma always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” Well, in the case of the official remake of Oscar-winning movie Forrest Gump, rechristened as ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’ starring Aamir Khan, we certainly know what we are getting and that is a box full of liberal propaganda, neatly packed with chocolates of Hindu hatred and vilification of the current ‘oppressive’ and ‘fascist’ Hindu nationalist regime.
Forrest Gump was released 27 years ago on July 6, 1994, and showed an endearing story of a dim-wit simpleton and how he traverses through life. While the movie won several Oscars at the time and became a global phenomenon, it certainly would have not managed to scale the same heights in today’s politically charged climate where Social Justice Warriors (SJW) dominate the space and cancel anything that is remotely conservative.
And Forrest Gump was high on conservative values. Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump was born and brought up in the red state of Alabama, was a god-fearing family man, an all-American football player and war hero who had no use of the growing counterculture movement prevailing at the time in America, which not surprisingly has turned into ‘Cancel culture’ in the present context.
He falls in love with a girl named Jenny, who is liberal in her thought process, becomes a hippie, ditching Gump, joins anti-war movements, hangs out with the Black Panthers while snorting drugs and psychedelics of all kinds. Eventually, pondering suicide and later dying of an unspecified disease.
In 2009 the National Review ranked ‘Forrest Gump’ No. 4 on its list of the 25 best conservative films of the past 25 years. And thus, more so than ever, the movie continues to invite polarizing views. However, the segue of the article is Laal Singh Chaddha and how it might turn out to be a dud affair if Aamir Khan tries to play with the ideology of the movie, which was the soul of Tom Hanks’ movie.
Imagine a woke Forrest Gump? The movie would have fallen flat at the box office. However, with Aamir Khan, the movie is already a disaster in the making. He has picked a Sardar for the protagonist role. A Sardar is stereotyped by Bollywood as the simpletons — the loveable yet dumb simpletons. He could have easily picked his own religion and anyone from the minority community but his head would have been on the spike in no time and so he settled with a Sardar.
Secondly, Aamir Khan’s movies over the last two decades have been replete with political messaging. Be it Fanna where he glorified terrorism or PK, where a naïve alien specimen lands in India, quickly learns the ropes of the Hindu-Muslim divide and starts to disparage the former, with aplomb. Add to it, the shows he has done, with Satyamev Jayate taking the pie. The show was a mess of mind-numbing ideas, convoluted topics which once again had Aamir’s vendetta as the sole force backing it.
A customary look at the crew of Laal Singh Chaddha is enough for our worst fears to come true. The writer of the movie is Atul Kulkarni, who has been helming a writing project for the first time, according to IMDb. Kulkarni has worked with Aamir in Rang De Basanti previously and has also starred in a couple of long-forgotten movies in Hey Ram and Page 3.
Just like the lead actor of the movie, Kulkarni is known more for his Social media activism than his movies. A glance at his Twitter handle proves where his allegiances lie and hence with utmost certainty it can be pointed that the movie will have a generous amount of obnoxious left-liberal values stuffed. The director is Advait Chandan who has directed Secret Superstar in the past. A movie that glorifies the life behind Hijaab and how it becomes a major plot point for the success of the protagonist in the movie. Well, we wonder what could possibly go wrong here?
A simpleton in Laal Singh Chaddha sees a lynching incident, goes about enquiring about it with his innocuous demeanour and learns that Hindus are bad while Muslims are good, and thus like Forrest Gump, marathons across the country for three years, demanding the current government be thrown out of power.
Aman ki Asha—the money laundering scheme by the left-liberals of the country to siphon funds and later humanize Pakistan could certainly become a plot point of the movie, and there is a reason for it. While shooting for Laal Singh Chaddha in Turkey, Aamir Khan met Turkish President and madmen Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s wife and held a long discussion.
Turkey and Pakistan are thick as thieves and have tried to interfere in India’s internal issues on numerous occasions in the past with Erdogan repeatedly raising the abrogation of article 370 issue in the UNSC, while Imran Khan toeing a similar line. Aamir and his now estranged wife, Kiran Rao, already do not feel safe about themselves and their kids in India, citing intolerance and thus, Pakistan appears to be the perfect, idealistic world to humanize in the movie.
Read More: As Turkey poses Islamist threat to India, Aamir Khan is busy being hosted by the Islamist Erdogans
And then there are the SJWs of the country, the fat positivity movement activists who think movies are a chariot to bring about a change in society. No, movies are about escapism from the whims and cruelties of the world.
There is a reason why Forrest Gump was so successful. It created a utopian world where a person with no brawns, a miserly IQ of 75 managed to muscle his way through life and emerge successfully. We batted for him, the audience felt connected to him, we knew his motivations and got behind him. When Gump found success in his shrimp business, it felt like we as the audience had finally made it. We hated Jenny for the simple fact that she used Gump and all for her political ideologies.
Imagine writing a character that cinemagoers still find themselves attached to. Forrest Gump was earnest, the writing was playful, devoid of any agenda but the liberals have made it another topic of discussion that it was too conservative in its approach.
Hollywood and Bollywood, both are on a dangerous slippery slope of wokeism. While Hollywood wokes want Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to have diversity by promoting ‘LGBTQ scenes, knowing well and truly Tolkien was a staunch Catholic and would have never stood for it and that books do not have a single such scene, a similar trend is being aped here in Bollywood.
Laal Singh Chaddha is simply an ego-project of Aamir Khan to run down a classic Hollywood movie to the ground so that he can peddle his agenda. Khan with his incogent, boorish, muddled and unimaginative ideas has set out on a crusade to churn out a vendetta driven movie and we as an audience cannot wait to give it a cold shoulder.