DUBAI // Salman Khan takes the job of entertaining audiences seriously.
"I try to do my best in every film," the Bollywood superstar said yesterday at the premiere of his new film, Ready, in Dubai.
"When someone comes into the cinema he wants to be entertained; the responsibility is ours, it's up to me to see that he goes away from the theatre satisfied."
Khan's frequent donations to charitable causes have endeared him to the masses, and he said he will include poor children in Mumbai, India's movie capital, when the film opens there today. About 3,000 needy children will see the movie at cinemas across the city, he said.
He also plans to give a portion of his income to film workers who earn paltry salaries in India's booming movie industry.
"Yes, I will give them a percentage of my income. I plan to give it to 22 [workers'] associations in the film industry," he said. "I'm still working out a format and then will go ahead."
Khan's success has come despite playing largely typecast roles in romantic comedies and action movies.
"I'm happy with the genres, I've done pretty much everything," said Khan, 45, who has acted in more than 70 movies over 23 years. "I just started doing action films, it keeps you on your toes. I've done comedy, romance and I've done bad films, you learn from it all."
He said he is content with his work and believes corny dialogue works.
In one scene of Ready, Khan looks directly at the camera and says: "In life there are three words you should not underestimate: I, me and myself".
The new movie relies on a typical plot where Khan rescues a girl, played by the south Indian actress Asin, from an arranged marriage. The two promptly fall in love and then mend fences with both sets of indignant parents. The movie also follows Khan on a quest to reunite other lovers whose families oppose their relationship.
The film stays true to stock Bollywood fare. It is liberally spiced with car chases, slow motion shots of Khan thrashing villains, and dances set to catchy tunes.
For Khan, this is all part of the entertainment quotient that keeps the audience engaged.
"It's really a funny film," he said. "None of us could keep a straight face. We cracked up laughing all the time; even in between takes."
Khan is well known for ripping off his shirt and gyrating to popular music, and the new movie promises much of the same. His pelvic thrusts in Ready might not endear him to purists, but critics believe it will succeed much like Khan's last blockbuster Dabanng (Fearless), about a crooked police officer.
"It's a ready ride for Salman, there is no stopping him," said Tarun Adarsh, a film analyst and publisher of Trade Guide. "He is the darling of the masses, no one entertains like Salman Khan. He is their hero, they adore him. With Salman, it's OK if it is a routine plot; the difference is his movies are entertaining."
rtalwar@thenational.ae
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- 50,000 years ago: 50m-wide iron meteor crashes in Arizona with the violence of 10 megatonne hydrogen bomb, creating the famous 1.2km-wide Barringer Crater
- 1490: Meteor storm over Shansi Province, north-east China when large stones “fell like rain”, reportedly leading to thousands of deaths.
- 1908: 100-metre meteor from the Taurid Complex explodes near the Tunguska river in Siberia with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima-type bombs, devastating 2,000 square kilometres of forest.
- 1998: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 breaks apart and crashes into Jupiter in series of impacts that would have annihilated life on Earth.
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