Amitabh Bachchan has a lot of accolades and acclaims going for him. He has even been crowned Actor of the Millennia.  But frankly, like every other actor, even Bachchan has had a lean spot, before Major Saab, which was a failure at the box office, but his role was appreciated in it, he acted in several movies that he as well as we would like to forget. We did not select these movies on whether they hits or flops, because even his flops like Ajooba, Toofan and Jaadugar were extremely likeable and watchable.  We have just chosen this list on one and only one criteria – we were bored out of our skull while watching these movies.

5. Akayla

Akayla, which means ‘Alone’ in Hindi was the beginning of the great Amitabh Bachchan slump back in the mid-nineties. In this movie, he starred with Aditya Panscholi, Jackie Shroff, Meenakshi Sheshadri and Amrita Singh. He played the role of Vijay, a straight police officer who is after a criminal mastermind, who has a twin brother to bail him out of trouble whenever he is arrested. When Vijay tries to arrest the duo again, they hide in his friend’s house and finally kill the friend and his wife. Vijay now finds out that the two have his younger brother on their hitlist, and has to reach him before the villains do.
Akayla was a flop at the box office, because the audience as not ready to see middle aged actor in the main role. Though Amitabh Bachchan went on to later portray middle aged and even elderly protagonist, this movie had so much of Bollywood masala in it, that the audience could not bring itself to taste it. The movie was written by Salim Khan and produced by G P Sippy. It was directed by Ramesh Sippy, who had famously directed Amitabh Bachchan in Sholay.

4. Indrajeet

Another crime against Amitabh Bachchan, this one starred the mainstay of commercial movies in the nineties. It had Jaya Prada, Amitabh Bachchan, Kader Khan, Sadashiv Amrapurkar, Kumar Gaurav and Saeed Jaffrey. Once again, Amitabh Bachchan plays a strict police officer who breaks off with his fiancé when she stands up to him, as Indrajeet tries to arrest her father, a criminal. Many years ago, his fiance’s brother kills his adopted daughter and his fiancé, and now Indrajeet has to avenge the deaths.
Though this was another potboiler, the audience was done and done with action, deaths and melodrama. Amitabh Bachchan in his weird get up did not help either. This one is another of those movies that make the list of ‘so bad, these are good’ movies.
The movie was prodeuced by Ramesh Behl and was directed by K . V Raju.

3. Mrityudaata

This movie, released in 1997, was the precursor to the publicity hype that you see when a movie is about to release today. Touted to be his comeback role, Mrityudaata was one of the first movies to book television advertisement slots and come up with an item song. Only, in this movie, the item song was an adrenaline rushing Punjabi song sung by Daler Mehndi. Unfortunately, the movie was a debacle at the box office. You would have thought that the people understood right there and then that even if a movie was made popular with publicity, it would not work if there was no substance in it.
This was another revenge drama made on the fact that Amitabh Bachchan is an awesome film actor. It was all about his brother commits suicide; because he is implicated in something, and then Bachchan goes on to extract revenge. The movie was as forgettable as the script was. This one starred Dimple Kapadia, Karishma Kapoor, Arbaaz Ali Khan and Paresh Rawal.

2. Insaniyat

What would you get if you put Amitabh Bachchan and Sunny Deol in a movie together? Add to that Chunky Pandey, who can actually carry out a role if given the right one? Well, if you thought it would be an action fest, think again, because Insaniyat had Amitabh, Sunny and Chunky together. It was about Amitabh Bachchan, a police officer – again – who takes the help of two criminals who keep fighting each other to defeat Brijbhan, a criminal mastermind who is behind ‘all the terrorist activities’ in India. This one was another debacle at the box office, and mainly because most of the screentime was spent when Amitabh would admonish the two for fighting each other, instead of actually having the movie move forward.

This movie is so bad that it did not get a release till date. This movie was announced in 1997 and was completed in 2003, but has still to see the light of the day. Maybe, with Karishma Kapoor now making a comeback, there is a chance that the producer might think of releasing this movie, but that too seems quite impossible, because the starcast has their hijinks quite a few times, but has done nothing for the movie. Arshad Warsi and Karishma Kapoor play young lovers, whose life gets into tatters when Arshad is framed in a murder case. The only hope that the young lovers now have is Amitabh Bachchan, a blind lawyer.