‘Table No. 21’ Holds Well At The Box Office; Goes The ‘Blood Money’ Way

Let’s begin with Table No. 21 first. As was indicated in the promos, the film was expected to be a stylised entertainer and this is how it turned out to be. The opening too was pretty much on the lower side, something that wasn’t surprising considering the fact that it had arrived with nominal promotion. Also, it didn’t carry a kind of star quotient to it that would have given it further impetus from the very opening show. This was always going to be a word of mouth affair and that’s exactly the way box office behaved as shows progressed.

With close to 6 crores coming in the weekend, the film’s outcome is on the same lines as Blood Money which released in March last year. The Kunal Khemu starrer was a mid-budget affair and after seeing a low opening (30%-40%) for itself, it had managed to stay reasonably steady. Ditto for this Rajeev Khandelwal, Tena Desae and Paresh Rawal affair which is expected to hold fort right through its first week and reach a respectable score.

Though critically this Aditya Datt film hasn’t been panned, overall reviews are mixed while ranging from average to good to very good. With audience having one only film as a new choice and Dabangg 2 being it’s only (though major) competition, Table No. 21 can hope take it’s chances.

Same can’t be said about the other three films, the combined business of which struggled to reach the 1 crore mark. While Rajdhani Express turned out to be a terrible outing with one of the most insipid star debut (Leander Paes) ever, another debut of the week, that of Gurdeep Mehndi with Meri Shadi Karao, went completely unnoticed as it got a very poor release. Same was the case with Dehraadun Diary that wasn’t even reviewed by most, hence seeing a royal ignore for itself.

Joginder Tuteja tweets @tutejajoginder