Post Credits Scene: How else can Crew explain the creative decision to give GoIbibo a close-up before Tabu, or put a bottle of Yardley perfume in the spotlight over Kriti Sanon?

Hindi movies of a certain kind can always be identified by two dead giveaways, even before they’ve actually begun. With an equal disregard for cinematic effect and creative integrity, the opening credits will spoil all the ‘guest appearances’ while overwhelming you with logos of brand partners — rare is the Indian actor who can suppress their ego to go uncredited; rarer is the Hindi movie producer who can turn down a good brand deal. It stands to reason that Crew — perhaps the most social media influencer-coded Hindi movie in recent memory — allows corporations to dictate its creative choices. This would’ve been harmless had it not been in direct conflict with the film’s central premise: middle-class women banding together to take down a wealthy business tycoon.

Geeta, Jasmine, and Divya Rana (from Haryana) — played by Tabu, Kareena Kapoor Khan, and Kriti Sanon — are flight attendants working at the fictional Kohinoor Airlines, closely modelled on the now-defunct Kingfisher Airways. They haven’t been paid in months, and are essentially surviving on the declining daily allowances that are handed out to them on international sectors, like ‘boondi’ at a temple. Each of them has compromised on their dreams to work at Kohinoor. Jasmine comes from a broken home and hopes to give her grandfather a grand life one day; Geeta wants to open a restaurant in Goa with her husband; Divya continues to lie to her long-suffering parents about having become a pilot.

Written by Rohan Naahar

New Delhi | Updated: May 31, 2024 19:19 IST

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Kareena Kapoor Khan and Tabu in a still from Crew.

Hindi movies of a certain kind can always be identified by two dead giveaways, even before they’ve actually begun. With an equal disregard for cinematic effect and creative integrity, the opening credits will spoil all the ‘guest appearances’ while overwhelming you with logos of brand partners — rare is the Indian actor who can suppress their ego to go uncredited; rarer is the Hindi movie producer who can turn down a good brand deal. It stands to reason that Crew — perhaps the most social media influencer-coded Hindi movie in recent memory — allows corporations to dictate its creative choices. This would’ve been harmless had it not been in direct conflict with the film’s central premise: middle-class women banding together to take down a wealthy business tycoon.

Geeta, Jasmine, and Divya Rana (from Haryana) — played by Tabu, Kareena Kapoor Khan, and Kriti Sanon — are flight attendants working at the fictional Kohinoor Airlines, closely modelled on the now-defunct Kingfisher Airways. They haven’t been paid in months, and are essentially surviving on the declining daily allowances that are handed out to them on international sectors, like ‘boondi’ at a temple. Each of them has compromised on their dreams to work at Kohinoor. Jasmine comes from a broken home and hopes to give her grandfather a grand life one day; Geeta wants to open a restaurant in Goa with her husband; Divya continues to lie to her long-suffering parents about having become a pilot.

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 Tabu, Kriti Sanon, and Kareena Kapoor Khan in a still from Crew.But when their middle-aged co-worker drops dead on a flight one day — this is the funniest bit of physical comedy in the entire film — the three women discover bars of gold strapped to his body. Uncle had been running some sort of smuggling operation under everybody’s noses for years, not only supplementing his income, but probably also sustaining a lavish secret lifestyle. With the airline on the verge of shutting down due to its owner’s financial crimes, the three women decide that now’s the time to take matters into their own hands. “Bees saal baiyon ki tarah kaam kiya,” is the casually classist remark that Geeta makes as she reflects on her own woes. “Har mahine tax katwaya, PF katwaya… Kal hum arsh mein they, aur aaj farsh pe.”

All three of them have families to support and bills to pay, single-handedly. But being women, they’re forced to temper personal ambitions. After the initial high of making loads of money through their illicit operation, the three women are caught and questioned by the cops. They discover that they’d inadvertently been funding their defaulting boss this whole time, and in effect, ensuring that their co-workers remain penniless. The guilt-ridden Geeta, Jasmine, and Divya Rana (from Haryana) put together their final plan, to take their criminal boss for every paisa that he has illegally accumulated and distribute the wealth back to the people. It’s like Jawan, but glossier and with significantly fewer anti-smoking disclaimers.

For all its anti-capitalist sentiment, however, Crew can’t help but feel like a product itself. How else can you explain GoIbibo getting a close-up before Tabu? How else can you explain the establishing shot of a scene spotlighting a box of Wow Momos? A bottle of Yardley perfume is more noticeable than Sanon in the introductory montage from Divya Rana (from Haryana), and the boastful BoAt branding in the climactic music video makes it feel less like a platform for starry hotness and more like Aman Gupta’s fever dream.

Even influencers find more elegant ways to integrate brands into their posts, and for a movie that appears to have been designed around the song “Choli Ke Peeche,” surely they could have found better ways to fulfil their contractual obligations without actively distracting the audience with these glorified commercials. Consider how intelligently director Luca Guadagnino got away with something like this in his recent film Challengers, which probably has even more brand placements than Crew. But each mention of Applebee’s and Adidas, Aston Martin and Augustinus Bader is integral to the film’s plot about social climbers and work horses. Instead of diverting attention from the drama, the product placement in Challengers actually enhanced it.

Michael Bay obnoxiously panning to a Victoria’s Secret banner in the middle of an action scene, or cutting to a bunch of Bud Light cans after a chase sequence in the Transformers movies is meaningless, because those movies are in no way pretending to stick it to the man. They’re trying to sell action figures. In that regard, Crew is similar to The Boys, the massively successful superhero show that critiques tech giants while happily streaming on Prime Video, or Barbie, which adopts a faux feminist attitude in an effort to increase toy sales. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this sort of studio filmmaking; it’s a means to an end. But watching Crew can often feel like chewing on a Maharaja Mac while parsing through the Communist Manifesto.