I was surprised when just a few days before the release of 'Rascals' there were predictions made on the lines of 'This Ajay Devgn-Sanjay Dutt starrer will take one of the top openings of the year'. Reason being, and as predicted in this very column last week, the film was reasonably awaited amongst the audience as well as trade circles but never expected to embark on a record breaking start by any means. Yes, it was always meant to be a safe film but for those claiming it to be a superhit or a blockbuster in the making were sadly mistaken as this David Dhawan film was never pitched as a mega crore money spinner.

This is how the box office too behaved over the opening (extended) weekend with around 23 crores coming in four days (the film had released at majority of theatres on Thursday itself). The film started well with a 7 crore plus opening on Thursday but slid further on Friday and Saturday (never a good sign) only to see some resurgence on Sunday. The film has seen good footfalls at massy centres but word of mouth has ranged between okay to decent, hence conveying it loud and clear that it isn't quite making it to the list of must-watch affairs for the audience.

As things stand today, the film has done far-far better than Dhawan's last flick 'Do Knot Disturb' that had starred Govinda and Riteish Deshmukh. However it is near impossible for the film to cross the 60 crores milestone set by 'Partner' that stays on to be Dhawan's highest grosser till date. In fact the first challenge here would be for the film to cross 'Double Dhamaal' total of 45 crores plus.

There isn't much to cheer about for the makers of 'Love Breaks Up Zindagi' though which saw average to good reviews coming it's way but that didn't quite translate into box office numbers. It was always a challenge for this Dia Mirza and Zayed Khan film to open on even 50% collections and what it was presented with was mere 20% odd footfalls. While 'Rascals' was of course a huge competition, the film was also marred by some poor show timings that further jeopardised chances of any impact that the film could have made.

Word of mouth has been average to good though and the film also showed decent momentum building over the weekend. However with just a week for itself and facing competition from as many as five films in the coming weekend, the film would now have to be content with good viewer-ship on television.

As for 'Soundtrack', the film saw good reviews coming its way but hardly any footfalls. This wasn't surprising at all since the film wasn't backed by good promotion that could have enticed audience enough to step into theatres.