A Suggestion For Our Bold-Faced, Copy Cat Filmmakers

For our neo filmmakers (or shall we say blatant plagiarizers), the new mantra for success is: What works in Hollywood can easily be re-hashed, butchered, or simply shamelessly ripped off and served on a shiny new platter to our unsuspecting masses.

For the uninitiated, we’re talking about the so-called “breakthroughs” in modern Indian cinema, like Black, Partner and the recent blue-eyed Bollywood baby called Blue. It comes as little surprise then that a brilliantly-directed, sensitive and heartwarming movie like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button got our desi filmmakers gray cells working overtime, figuring out how best they could replicate the mega-success without having to waste too much time and money over trivial non-essentials like a script.

Enter the never-say-die angry young man of Indian Cinema, the Big B himself who decides to do a Brad Pitt cameo by playing son to his own son in an upcoming movie Paa. Not to be outdone, the long banished King Khan decides to pull a fast one by playing an Asperger’s Syndrome victim in his next flick, imaginatively named My Name is Khan.

And just before the train pulls out of Cheap Rip-off Town, Hritik Roshan decides to jump right on with Guzarrish, where he plays a paraplegic patient. Not one to shy away from undeserved publicity, Mr. Roshan also gave lengthy interviews about how he was ‘not allowed to workout or shave’ in order to deliver an authentic performance.

Ummm… sorry to be the one who breaks this to you Hritik, but in order to deliver a convincing performance, you have to act well – not just grow a beard and be lazy. As we all know, your last efforts at playing a mentally-challenged child rustled up quite a storm about how poor your knowledge of autism was. And no, we’re not buying in to the ‘eight year old child trapped in an adult man’s body’ bogus you’ve been feeding us all along. If you’re trying to be credible, please do your homework and stop harping about your scruffy beard.

But, I digress…

So, is mental disability the next ‘new thing’ for Bollywood, after our spate of pathetic superhero films, amnesia-inducing science fiction and laughable fantasy?

Dudes look, I have a great idea for you. How about a movie with a group of conniving, pretentious film makers who habitually steal ideas from foreigners and rehash them as their own? Maybe you can title it The Mimic Men? But wait, somebody already did that title….umm….that means it should be ideal for you!