Indian Gulliver readies for school-going Lilliputians

MUMBAI: Gulliver will soon walk the land of school-going Indian Lilliputians. Jonathan Swift’s eighteenth-century classic has inspired a relatively big-budget Indian feature film for children, which is scheduled for release on May 16.
Made in Hindi and dubbed in English, this could be the next big thing in the Indian children’s film genre after Makdee, literally and otherwise.While Gulliver’s Travels has inspired several creative works down the decades, the makers of Jajantaram Mamantaram (nicknamed ‘J2M2’) insist that the film is not just a desi adaptation but has its own “original’’ twists.Also, they say the big-mansmall-man prototype is scattered across Indian repertoires as diverse as Gujarati fables to religious scriptures. The central myth apart, there are a couple of exceptional aspects to the movie.
For one, the two-hour movie flaunts 63 minutes of compositing (cinematically juxtaposing the big and the small) and special effects, done by city-based Maya Entertainment. Second, the unusually big money that production and distribution house I-Dream has breathed into the film—an estimated Rs 7 crore— indicates that it is extremely bullish about the project. “We have had too many Lord of the Rings and Harry Potters. So we thought why not create our own property,’’ say Ashish Bhatnagar, CEO of I- Dream. The movie will be distributed abroad as well.
Hollywood giant Columbia Tristar is distributing it in India. Blitzkrieg marketing will revolve around corporate associations involving tattoos, chocolates, soft toys, egames and slots on cartoon channels. While Javed Jaffrey plays the big man, Aditya, in the movie, the scriptwriter, director and executive producer of the film Soumitra Ranade has introduced a giant antihero named Jhamunda to counter the protagonist. Also, Gulshan Grover plays the main villain.
Test screenings of the movie have in fact shown that the villain could get more popular with the WWE and Emimemsoaked generation than the hero. “‘Actually, I found the original Gulliver story quite boring,’’ says the young Soumitra Ranade. “Gulliver is so big and he has no challenger.’’ And how could an Indian Gulliver not sing? Right enough, and the adventure flick has been interspersed with five songs. Mr Ranade has named the village of the little people Shundi, borrowing from Satyajit Ray’s masterpiece Gupi Gayen Bagha Bayen, which was also made for children. While Swift’s text oozed with stark political satire, the Indian version will have it at a very subliminal level. “The children are bound to miss it, if not many of the adults,’’ says Mr Ranade. He, however, refuses to spell out the satire element in the movie.
With huge hype plans involving Jhamunda and others set and child product companies planning to unleash a flood of J2M2 merchandise, the filmmakers have kept the option of a sequel open—a lesson from Hollywood, the Brobdingnagian.