The box-office performance of "Dil Mange More" is essential to keep the crowds coming into theatres as the other big release of December - "Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Sathiyon" - is performing well below expectations.

The film's war background seemingly holds no appeal and one of the reasons could be that people have no appetite for gloomy films after witnessing the devastation caused by the tsunami. "This film too opened to very dull houses all over India. Being a festive period, people wanted to see fun films rather than go in for guns and patriotism," said a trade observer.

Hopefully this will be last from the done-to-death genre of chest-thumping jingoistic films.

A rosy box-office report evaded "Swades" too. The Ashitosh Gowartikar film with one of Shah Rukh Khan's best-ever performances mainly found appreciation with critics and certain viewers. The general public rejected it.

"The first week's collections were shockingly poor. At some small centres, the film had great difficulty running the entire week. Mumbai was slightly better but not good enough," said a trade analyst.

Ditto for the multi-starrer "Musafir", whose collections fell further in its second week. As producers had sold the film for a huge price, they made money but the distributors are having a tough time recovering their money, analysts said.

"Raincoat", an antithesis of "Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Sathiyon", was made in the same format as "Black" - a small-budget film with big names but featuring strong content.

But internationally acclaimed director Rituparno Ghosh could not entice the masses to come and watch his well-crafted film. Viewers remained the very discerning.

Sanjay Leela Bansali, who is ready with "Black", will hope to capitalise on the mass appeal associated with his pervious films.