“Mahe-shinte Prati-kaazham'’reads out Asif Iqbal, one of the guys hosting the movie trailer review on the London-based YouTube channel Stageflix. His partner Hari congratulates him and says, “Wow man, your pronunciation is getting better and better.” To which Asif responds “It’s because of watching too many Tamil and Malayalam movies!” As the men continue to watch the trailer of Maheshinte Prathikaaram and then later on give a quick and crisp review, Malayalees back home can only sit back in awe and wonder at the sheer genuinity with which these non-Malayalee, non- Indian men review our movie trailers.
Cutting the right kind of trailer can change the fate of a movie. However, reviewing a movie trailer is still alien to even the most expert movie buffs here. Channels such as Toma Puck, Stageflix, Bollyfools and Barbies Worldz are not only huge hits amongst viewers across the globe. Stageflix and Bollyfools are two of the most popular amongst the lot.
Ask Ravi Patel and Salim Raja from the UK-based Youtube channel Bollyfools why they review trailers? Here is what they had to say — “We love film, it starts there. Trailers have changed so much in the last 10 years, nowhere more so than in the Indian film industry, and we thought it would be a great way to share great films and learn more about Indian cinema by exploring through those trailers.”
Hari and Asif had an interesting turn of events which lead them to Malayalam movie industry, “Hari had reacted to a Malayalam movie trailer called Double Barrel and it was the first ever trailer reaction for a Malayalam movie on Youtube. This particular video gained so much views and attention from the Malayalam audience and that was totally unexpected. So we started to research more on Malayalam cinema and focused to bring more reaction from this film industry. We learned that some of the best technicians in the film industry were from Kerala and they were producing quality movies which we did not want to miss out on,” says Asif.
So how do they manage without subtitles? “Well, sometimes we do have subtitles. But also we’ve spent most of our lives watching films and working with the industry and one thing we’ve found is that the language of film is universal. The images, the sound work, the texture of the film communicates so much and through that we can interpret a lot,” explains Salim. But they also admit that they get it wrong sometimes.
Asif and Hari points out, “We were not much interested in reacting and reviewing trailers without subtitles as we do not understand. But at the end of the day, People wanted to see us react to trailers even without subtitles. We strongly encourage the makers to put subtitles on their trailers as it will attract a bigger audiencewill attract a bigger audience.”
Do they know the star value of the actors in the movie trailer that they review ?
We already know some of these big stars like Rajinikanth and Shahrukh Khan and that they have a huge fan following around the world,” says Asif. He goes on to add, “But we were not quite aware of actors in Malayalam industry. After watching a couple of Malayalam movie trailers, we got to know about Pritviraj, Nivin Pauly, Dulquer Salmaan and Fahad Fazil and that they are hugely popular among Malayalam community. We also got to know about the two biggest stars in Malayalam film industry and that is Mammooty and Mohanlal. We recently reacted to Mammooty’s White trailer and now we are eager to watch the trailer of Puli Murugan from Mohanlal.”
Salim on the other hand says it’s the subscribers that directs them to star status of the actors “The old school superstars in Bollywood are obvious and we have much more awareness there, but people like Ajith and Vijay brought an insane Tamil audience to our channel and Mammooty and Dulquer do the same in building our Malayalam audience.”
When asked about watching films whose trailers they review Bollyfools presenter Ravi says “We have a long long list but we don’t always get time to watch every movie we review”.
“We do try our best to watch as many movies as we can. But sometimes we are unable to watch them as they have only limited release in UK,” points out the Stageflix presenters when asked the same. So much for the love of movies looks like it’s time for Malayalam movie lovers to up their game when it comes to calling themselves ardent fans of cinema.
