Chocolate Day 2024: What Relationship Does Cocoa Have With Cinema?

We are going to be drowning in chocolate today, right from chocolate memes to quotes and everything else. And yes, don’t forget to gift your partner a fancy box of chocolates, before an entire social media onslaught ends up reminding them of it. Most of us love the brown hued delicacy made of roasted and ground cacao seed kernels, with the dark chocolate variation known for being its healthier version. The silver screen and popular culture too have used chocolate in various forms to express their ideas and thoughts every now and then.

The current generation would probably cite the example of Tony Kakkar’s song Chocolate (2021) as an example. The millenials can also give their own take on it, although this Bollywood fact is something that isn’t often remembered- the song ‘Chocolate, lime juice’ from the Salman Khan-Madhuri Dixit blockbuster Hum Aapke Hai Kaun (1994), sung by Lata Mangeshkar with the catchy lyrics:

Chocolate, lime juice, ice cream, toffeeya

Pehle jaise abb mere shauk hain kaha

Gudiya khilone meree saheliya.

Although the most easily recollected inference in cinema would be Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) starring the inimitable Johnny Depp and based on the evergreen book by Roald Dahl.

Interestingly, the same year also saw the Bollywood thriller film Chocolate, directed by Vivek Agnihotri and starring Anil Kapoor, Suniel Shetty, Emraan Hashmi, Irrfan Khan, Arshad Warsi, Tanushree Dutta and Sushma Reddy. Although it failed to make a mark at the box office, music afficionados should certainly listen to one of its songs, Zahreeli Raatein.

Depp, by the way, was also in the film Chocolat (2000), about a French woman who opens a chocolate shop in a tiny village. Another film which I personally never heard of is Chocolate (2008), from the director of the hugely successful Ong Bak action series. The movie has an intriguing premise- an autistic girl armed with formidable martial art skills faces off against ruthless gangs.

And while the ad world is full of chocolate advertisements featuring several Bollywood actors like Sonam Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Katrina Kaif, Nimrat Kaur and more, a certain commercial featuring Preity Zinta willl always stand out as the one that introduced India to her.

Published on: Sunday, July 07, 2024, 08:00 AM IST