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'Taare Zameen Par' rocks US box-office
04th Jan 2008 13.01 IST
By Agencies

After receiving effusive praise from critics across India and leaving many a cinegoer moist-eyed, Taare Zameen Par has earned excellent reviews worldwide, while garnering excellent collections in the overseas territories.

The film's moving and poignant portrayal of how a childhood of carefree abundance is trampled by the dictates of a system putting premium of perfectionists and perfectionism has got it standing ovations from the audiences and great reviews from International critics.

Being distributed by UTV Motion Pictures in the overseas market, 'Taare Zameen Par' has collected more than 1.45 million US dollars in the US and West Asia alone at the end of the second weekend, making it a bigger opener than Chak De India in the US market.

The film, in the US, has raked in 850,000 US dollars with 71 prints on 66 screens in the first week. The excellent audience response led the film to be expanded to 69 screens on 74 prints in the second week.

UTV sources said the word of mouth is extremely strong on this film, which has sustained it during the weekdays showings.

There have also been reports of standing ovations all across North America.

''Looking at the response to the film, we ascertain that it will be one of the top four Hindi films from India in the US,'' Siddharth Roy Kapur, EVP Marketing, Syndicate and Distribution, UTV Motion Pictures, said.

In the Gulf, 'Taare Zameen Par' received great accolades and at the end of the second week, collections having crossed 600,000 US dollars on just 25 prints.

What was highlighted in this market was the way the film's collections have held strong over the weekdays as well.

Though a slow starter, a strong word of mouth publicity for the film saw 'Taare Zameen Par' evoke a strong response from the audiences, drawing crowds even during the weekdays when the collections are usually seen to take a dip.

''Every once in a while, you are taken aback by a movie. It is a rare experience, especially coming from Bollywood. 'Taare Zameen Par' is a different experience altogether. The movie is one of the best ones to come out of the Bollywood factory,'' says Shariq Hamid who runs Funasia, a multiplex chain with 27 screens across four cities in the US.

Aamir Khan 's sensitive narration, in the movie, of the story of a dyslexic child Ishaan Awasthi (played brilliantly by Darsheel Safary ), whose parents' and teachers' impatience with his learning disabilities leaves him devastated, turning him into a recluse, has won encomiums and evoked laudatory reviews from critics across India.

Infact, the heart-wrenching scenes of the child Ishaan, undergoing mental trauma due to the impatience and frustration of his parents and teachers at his lack of progress, have had many in the film fraternity, even the hard-hearted ones, benumbed and almost moved to tears.

Filmmakers like Vidhu Vinod Chopra , Madhur Bhandarkar and Anurag Kashyap recently admitted to have been deeply moved by the film's fervent plea to society not to curb the feeling of innocence and carefree abundance characterised by childhood.

Kashyap, whose films like the unreleased 'Paanch' and the recently released Black Friday and No Smoking have delved into the dark sides of human psyche says, '''Taare Zameen Par' took me back to my hostel days. If you take away the dyslexia, it seems like my story. The film affected me so deeply that I was almost left speechless.

''After watching the film, I was asked how I liked 'Taare Zameen Par'. I could not talk as I was deeply overwhelmed.''

The tremendous impact that 'Taare Zameen Par' had on him led Kashyap to write about the film on his personal blog, even though he admitted it was not his kind of film.

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