Let me mention that certain people have been criticized in this review. The ever present trend of copying in Bollywood seems to have reached its pinnacle with almost every release of 2008 being total rip offs of Hollywood films. The copying of Hollywood movies has been something that Bollywood has been doing for a long time; I heard from elders that the famous stars of yesteryear imitated certain Hollywood actors.
Many old Bollywood movies were based on Hollywood movies. And it is now that the trend has had an explosive growth. The mantra of Bollywood seems to be copy and be proud of it. Certain directors like RGV, who simply copy Hollywood films and call the copies better than the originals and Music Directors like Pritam, who is always on the lookout for something to copy are the premier faces of Bollywood.
The various things that Bollywood movies copy are given:
Stories: Mainly from Hollywood
movies, or stories from other languages. Examples : Parineeta, Devdas, Anamika etc.
Anyone who has read the first page of Parineeta will flee the hall after watching
the first scene of Parineeta. The same goes for the SRK starrer Devdas.
Music: This is something Bollywood excels in. Copying from Bengali,
Marathi, Urdu, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian, etc music. Bollywood music directors
probably have the largest collections of music from around the world; after all,
choices have to be made.
Example: Any of Pritam’s films, etc
Actions: After Matrix was released all of Bollywood erupted in
attempts to copy those action scenes. The same has been done with many other films,
none of the action scenes have been good though.
Example: Most Bollywood action films, Main hoon na, aparichit
etc
Remake: The latest craze in Bollywood seems to remake its own
films, thereby causing widespread debates between the over 40’s and under 40’s.
Some of the remakes are well done, others are trash.
Example: Don, RGV ki Aag etc
Style: Every style of Bollywood seems to be copies from Bollywood
movies. Right from the 70’s and maybe before that. The dresses, hairstyles,
dialogue deliveries, the whole deal. One huge example I found is from the song “Dum
maro Dum”. The hippy culture started in USA in the 60’s. They made a
counter culture movement and copied from Indian culture. The geniuses of
Bollywood copied that from them. So we made a copy of a copy whose original was
ours.
Complete Rip offs: These involve films which are blow by
blow copies of Hollywood films. Every word,
every detail, every dialogue is painstakingly copied and filmed.
Examples: Badsaah, Rakshak, Race etc.
But Bollywood has made good movies, but the percentage of
good movies is extremely low. Our average is 2 good movies a year at the most.
Unless this percentage is improved, Bollywood will never shine.