Will Tumhari Sulu Help Vidya Balan Bounce Back To Mainstream Success?

Vidya Balan is one of the most talented actresses working in the industry today. Long before the trend of female-led vehicles now that also taste commercial success, Vidya Balan was the pioneer of female-led cinema and proving to naysayers that actresses too can carry a film on their own and make it a hit. And the best thing was that these films were far from the usual masala films Bollywood is known to produce.

Vidya is the torchbearer of the changing face of Indian cinema and she hit 2 birds with a stone by delivering hits that were content oriented and led by a female actor. She is the recipient of 5 Filmfare awards and one National Award, Padma Shri and numerous other honors that have been showered on her for her enviable body of work.

Yet, she seems to be caught up in a box office draught for the last 5 years and the last certified box office hit featuring her was Kahaani in 2012. She has appeared in 6 major films since then and all of these films were amongst one of the most awaited films of those years but none of them exactly set the box office on fire as was expected. Some films were average performers while others flopped. A lot is riding on Tumhari Sulu for Vidya Balan and the trailer does promise a good premise about a slice of life film.

Reasons- What exactly is the reason her films are not performing well? Well, for the starters, most of her films have been bogged down by poor scripts and an actor is able to perform to his/her potential if the material given to them is good. She has been a standout performer in all of her films and critics as well as fans have praised her performances but criticised the poor script and direction.

Powers Intact- It also makes one thing clear, her skills as an actor have not diminished as she’s been referred to as the sole bright point in poor films. It happens often in an actor’s career and their career graph is full of ups and downs. We have seen stars like Salman Khan , Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan coming off strongly as ever after a lull phase. So its only a matter of time before her films start performing at the box office too.

Competition- Other reason that her films haven’t been performing well could be the choices in front of the audiences in terms of female-led films. Earlier it was only Vidya who was doing solo female-driven films that were minting money at the box office, now a new breed of actresses are coming up and performing well in the films where they are the lead.  The success of Pink and Queen have made the audiences believe that other female actors are also doing good stuff and going by the ticket prices these days, they can only watch one or two films a month.

Still, Vidya Balan is not one of those actors who simply disappear into the oblivion and she is constantly working and improving. Tumhari Sulu may provide her some respite in terms of box office collections and it will be interesting to see her next projects.