Often we say off late that Bollywood is in an evolving stage and that Indian cinema is going places. Hindi films are getting more recognition across the globe and our filmmaking standards have advanced immensely. But have our filmmaking standards actually advanced? We might have gone high on budgets, techniques, SFX, adrenaline action, sex and violence, story-telling patterns, et al. But the basic crux of a film remains its story. And when it comes to the grass-root level, we are still on a creative bankruptcy.
Just for instance almost every third film released in 2008 was directly lifted or in milder terms inspired, derived or loosely based on some other film. That original source could either be some foreign film and in some cases movies from our own country copying South films and at times also yesteryear Hindi films. One of the year’s biggest grosser, ’Race’ was simply lifted from the Hollywood flick ’Goodbye Lover’ . Abbas-Mustan have seldom been original and with ’Race’ they continued their legacy of blatant plagiarism.
Rakesh Roshan’s ’Krazzy 4’ was a shoddy remake of the Micheal Keaton starrer ’The Dream Team’ while it was common knowledge that the Amitabh-Salman starrer ’God Tussi Great Ho’ was lifted from ’Bruce Almighty’ . Both the Mallika Sherawat starrers were lifted from foreign sources. ’Ugly Aur Pagli’ was a frame-to-frame copy of a Korean film ’Yeopgijeogin Geunyeo’ (English title: My Sassy Girl) while ’Maan Gaye Mughal-e-Azam’ was derived from Mel Brook’s ’To Be Or Not To Be’ which in turn was a remake of a 1942 film of the same name. While both the English films were nominated at the Oscars, the Indian version can surely win a Razzie.
Despite being evidently derived from a yesteryear Hindi film ’Aaj Ki Taaza Khab ar’, the makers of ’Golmaal Returns’ kept denying the fact. Not to forget Rohit Shetty’s ’Sunday’ was a remake of a Telugu film ’Anukokunda Oka Raju’ . Irrfan Khan was funny in ’Dil Kabaddi’ but one cannot laugh off the fact that it was a remake of Woody Allen’s ’Husbands and Wives’ . Rajshri looked for reference in their own library while remaking their old film ’Tapasya’ as Ek Vivaah Aisa Bhi .
T-Series decided to officially remake Subhash Ghai’s ’Karz ’ despite the fact that a version of the film was already hit amongst the audiences in the form of ’Om Shanti Om’ . While Lindsay Lohan’s ’Just My Luck’ can just be tagged as the kick-off point for ’Kismet Konnection’ , the year also saw its remake in the form of Good Luck . For the second half of ’Singh is Kinng’ where Akshay Kumar poses Kirron Kher as a wealthy woman, Anees Bazmee has essentially derived the premise from Frank Capra’s ’Lady for a Day’ which he himself remade as ’A Pocketful of Miracles’ later and was subsequently also remade by Jackie Chan as ’Ji Ji’ .
Samar Khan clearly took the plot of the Tom Cruise - Jack Nicholson starrer ’A Few Good Men’ for his courtroom drama ’Shaurya’ and Indianized it with a victimized Muslim angle. The same conflict was applied to ’Aamir’ which was derived from a Filipino film ’Cavite’ . ’Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na’ director Abbas Tyrewala sketched the characters of ’De Taali’ loosely based on the English sitcom ’Dawson’s Creek’ . Priyadarshan continued his custom of quick Malayalam remakes for ’Mere Baap Pehle Aap’ which originated from ’Ishtam’ . Randeep Hooda - Shahana Goswami’s Ru-ba-ru was a blatant face-off of ’If Only’ . Anant Mahadevan acknowledged that his Minissha Lamba starrer ’Anamika’ was an adaptation of ’Rebecca’ .
Then there were some films which you would not want to categorize as remakes but certainly they borrowed references from others. Ajay Devgan’s directorial touch to ’U Me aur Hum’ was magical but one can’t avoid drawing parallels with films like ’The Notebook’ and ’50 First Dates’ . Though not as effective, the Salman Khan - Anil Kapoor brotherly bonding in ’Yuvvraaj’ was derived from the Tom Cruise - Dustin Hoffman chemistry in the Oscar winner ’Rain Man’ . The motivation to pose as gays in ’Dostana’ was somewhat suggestive of Adam Sandler’s ’I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry’ though otherwise the films were different. And though Aamir would claim that ’Ghajini’ is an official remake of the Tamil film and has nothing to do with ’Memento’, the Polaroid camera and body tattoos have a different story to say.
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