Bollywood's Copy Cats

Bollywood has always been a land of flying vehicles, of people being flung in the air by heroes with superhuman strength, of auto rickshaws swivelling on front tyres and other logic and gravity defying scenes that leave the audiences clutching their last straws of sanity. As if refusing to acknowledge Newton wasn't enough, Bollywood has been, time and again, adding plagiarism to its list of sins. It seems to be suffering from a strange kind of kleptomania for several decades now given its recurring urge to blatantly steal plotlines illegally from Hollywood's critically acclaimed, box office hit films. Originality is something that is gone with the wind; Bollywood makes no attempt to catch it. Instead, it manages to copy a perfectly sensible movie and turn it into an insane, incoherent plotline with cloying dialogues, bad screenplay and inadequate narrative arc. Today, BollyCurry will leaf through such Bollywood movies that are nothing but rip offs of the best Hollywood movies.

Action Replayy (2010) is a plagiarized version of Back To The Future (1985), which has a son trying to revive his parents' loveless marriage by travelling back in time. Though the primary intent was to plagiarize the highest grossing film and make it a box office hit, the result was nothing short of disastrous as the movie ended up garnering negative reviews and was a box office flop. While Back To The Future soared into the high skies of success, Action Replayy had the luck of someone falling from the skies, hitting every twig, every branch of the ugly tree on their way down. Is it any wonder that the sequels of Back to the Future remain untouched by our kleptomaniac Bollywood?

 

This is one Hollywood rehash that makes you wish there was a special prison for creatively challenged makers. There's Something About Mary (1998) has Ted, a geek trying to trace his high school sweetheart Mary and hires a detective who, along with several others end up falling for Mary. Deewane Huye Paagal (2005) has the baby faced Shahid Kapoor portraying a nerd trying to find his love Tanya/ Natasha/ mind numbingly tedious Rimi Sen, and has many rivals like Akshay Kumar, Suniel Shetty and many others trying to woo her. While There's Something About Mary has an impeccable comic timing, witty dialogues, amazing screenplay and even superior direction, the same cannot be said for its rip off which is a combination of silly jokes, sillier characters and mediocre direction. If you need an example of how something extraordinarily good can be ripped to shreds of something excruciatingly painful, Deewane Huye Paagal perfectly fits the bill.

 

If there is one thing worse than a movie which has a plotline that appears to be a disastrous lapse of sanity, it is the creative vision of those who believe that the said movie is ripe for ripping. This can be said for the Hollywood movie Hitch (2005) and its plagiarized Indian version, Partner (2007).  While Hitch has Alex, the date doctor chasing a gossip columnist, Partner has our Love Guru, Salman Khan chasing the photojournalist, Lara Dutta. While Hitch transcends all the borders of normalcy and steps on the blurry lines of lunacy, Partner goes ahead to transcend all the borders of lunacy as well.

 

While there are many aneurism bursting, insanity inducing movies, God Tussi Great Ho (2008) takes the cake, the baker, and the bakery to the mad house. And the fact that this movie was a rework of the critically acclaimed, Bruce Almighty (2003), will definitely have you bursting something important in sheer outrage. The movie follows a man questioning God with melodramatic indignation, about all the problems in his life. And what follows the movie, is the viewer questioning God, that whatever it was worth getting inside the movie theatre, if getting out was worth a lot more. God Tussi Great Ho is more than just a can't- go-wrong' script gone off really bad, the movie is so insensible that it makes you draw out your non-existent .45 calibre handgun and shoot everyone who claimed to have enjoyed the said movie.

 

Bollywood shows a shocking level of complacency when it comes to plagiarizing famous Hollywood scripts. Not only does it copy the entire script, scenes as well as dialogues, the makers have the audacity of giving excuses and denying the accusations by claiming that the said movies are loosely based on non-existent novels and regional Indian movies. Even though rehashed movies come out with hilarious one star reviews and the same movies lie like abandoned vehicles in the rain on the roads of Bollywood, the makers do not try to come up with something original and creative. All they do is find another movie to copy and defend all accusations while thanking God from within for not creating people with inbuilt polygraphs. With this BollyCurry is signing off leaving you to jot down the names of other Bollywood rip offs that have made you rip your own heads off.

 

Author: Aditi P.

Editors: Dhanya S. and Mohini N.

Graphics: Rifah K.