Bollywood? Nahiiiiiiiiiiiiin !
A great visionary and Film-maker, Satyajit Ray, once said, "There will come a time when Hollywood won't need to advertise their movies in India because Bollywood is doing a fine job of making crappy-shitty movies to automatically divert people to them."
Okay! okay! He probably didn't say that, but I am pretty sure, with the pace Indian movies are inclining in an audience's graph from "What-the hell-was-that" to "I-lost-three-hours-of-my-life", he probably must be doing somersaults in his grave right now.
My dear readers, (which I guess are not more than four), this is as hard for me to concur, as it was for Frodo to carry that evil ring, but Bollywood has now finally developed itself into an epitome of "Wastage of time, energy and of course money".
A lot of people get inexplicably chauvinistic when it comes to defending Bollywood. But let me just put my case on the table first.
A HANDFUL of movies go on to receive critical acclaim, I agree, but go back and read out aloud the first two words of this sentence.
What we often choose to ignore is the fact that hundreds of movies made each year, are just plain craptastic crap that can creep the creepth out of even a creepy guy (who might have come to the cinema hall with the sole intention of ogling couples making out in such movies).
Okay, I got a little carried off there for a moment but let's come back to our glamorous, plastic world of Bollywood. As I said earlier, Bollywood has now become a crapster country and directors like 'Rohit Shetty' surely are the Mayors of it's towns. I have literally tried to kill myself by succumbing into the pillow after watching one if his movies. Yes, he started off nicely with the Golmaal-I and Dhamaal-I but then I don't know what happened to him on the way, may be he hit his head with a pole while fantasizing about flying cars or something, but he has ventured himself on making movies which are utter disgrace to human intelligence. I am not even talking about the cheap comedy in his movies but Mr. Shetty can you please explain me how can someone make other person fly or flip two-three rounds just by punching him once in stomach. Such stunts have made me to come to this realization that what Rahul Gandhi jokes are to twitter, Rohit Shetty movies are to Bollywood. Nothing new or funny in them anymore but will surely be a hit.
I don't know from where our creative Bollywood directors get these ideas but Dabang-2, Rowdy Rathore, Son of Sardaar, Yamla Pagla Deewana ... all these and many more seem to follow the same trend. The Wachowski brothers must be pretty amazed now that every Bollywood movie is just Matrix with lots of jeeps, trucks and no story line. Moreover, it doesn't matter what accents, tones, speaking disability a character has in Bollywood movies, but while singing they always have perfect voice.
Speaking of singing, now if it isn't an action oriented scene then there are the songs in our movies where our actor-actress (or I should say "Hero-Heroine") are dancing like there's no tomorrow in the middle of the road or in some mall with random white people as extras. But that's not it, just wait for it and out of no where, Voila! sylphlike foreign chicks fancied up in skimpy, sparkly outfits and sometimes tight T-shirts clung to their best assets, towering a minimum of half an inch above our hero APPEARS, *clicks fingers* just like that.
I don't know when it happened but there is a worm cradling in our Indian brains which is to emulate Western culture in every possible way we can. Yes, I do understand the rationale behind globalization or whatever! But that is no excuse for Bollywood's incompetent attempts at aping Hollywood.
Movies which strive to be artsy and erudite like 'My Name Is Khan' is apparently a mash-up between 'Forrest Gump' and 'I am Sam' .
'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' which beautifully brought the novel of the same name to life whereas 'Kyon Ki', it's remake version of Bollywood, is more about mad people doing funny things all the time.
Nolan's Memento was turned into the mediocre sap-fest that is Gajini.
A few years ago, Ram Gopal Verma made a movie "inspired by Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita", turned out to be a blatant plagiarism of American Beauty.
And 'Zinda' the complete xerox copy of Korean movie 'Old-boy'. While the original movie is about a guy who is kept in captivity for 15 years and then was given 5 days to figure out why he was kidnapped. Imitating the plot, Bollywood churned out 'Zinda' where the man (Sanjay Dutt) was kept in captivity for 14 years and given 4 days to figure out why he was kidnapped. Big deal of a change, huh? *Slow claps*
'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' which beautifully brought the novel of the same name to life whereas 'Kyon Ki', it's remake version of Bollywood, is more about mad people doing funny things all the time.
Nolan's Memento was turned into the mediocre sap-fest that is Gajini.
A few years ago, Ram Gopal Verma made a movie "inspired by Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita", turned out to be a blatant plagiarism of American Beauty.
And 'Zinda' the complete xerox copy of Korean movie 'Old-boy'. While the original movie is about a guy who is kept in captivity for 15 years and then was given 5 days to figure out why he was kidnapped. Imitating the plot, Bollywood churned out 'Zinda' where the man (Sanjay Dutt) was kept in captivity for 14 years and given 4 days to figure out why he was kidnapped. Big deal of a change, huh? *Slow claps*
But why I am ranting about Bollywood, you ask. Well, I can not just fathom the fact that how can an industry that practically thrives on plagiarism be so popular? How can these people, so called "Hit-Directors", comfortably make complete crap-fests trailing behind Hollywood like a stray puppy behind scraps of food or like 'Gollum' after loosing the Ring and still be awarded with so many accolades. Seriously sometimes in the middle of night after watching such movies, I lay awake on my bed and try to make sense out of these movies but invariably I fail. I mean do they really think of their audience so stupid or dumb that they can show like anything or is it the vice-versa.
Now, I am all okay with the people of negligible intelligence plopping their jumbo cans on plush couches and making huge amount of bucks. But what worries me is that these actors after their acting careers come to a dead end, join politics and then comment that "Rs 5-12 is enough for a common man meal". The future of our country or at the very least many important decisions may be in their hands. I'm scared.
