Bollywood has surely come of age with filmmakers experimenting with genres, themes, locations, characterizations to try to satiate urban as well as rural cinema appetite. 2010 has been quite an unusual year for Bollywood. While unknown names and smaller films made it big, the ones that were looked upon as commercial money spinners actually tanked. Yet, the industry churns movies with such swiftness, one can barely keep up.
How many times have you walked out of the theatre questioning, ‘what was that all about?’ or you are enjoying a movie when suddenly the proceedings take a different route and you exclaim out of despair trying hard to make sense. Despite having good scripts, or some bad ones, filmmakers take the liberty of going overboard with narrations combining too many themes, emotions into one, thus testing the audience’s intelligence or patience or both.
10. We are Family – ‘Lets Rock Song’
From Karan Johar’s Dharma Camp, We are Family directed by debutant Siddharth Malhotra began the tradition of legally getting permissions to borrow scripts, acknowledging them and remaking with desi spices for the Indian audiences. So, the Julia Roberts – Susan Sarandon starrer StepMom became Bollywood’s We are Family starring Kareena Kapoor and Kajol. While the Hindi version maintained similar theme, scenes weren’t copied frame-to-frame and references were avoided as far as possible.
Besides the hullabaloo over the title, the winning casting of leading ladies, and screaming atop rooftops over procedural remake rights, there was one particular part that was in headlines prior to release. Elvis Presley’s super hit ‘Jailhouse Rock’ which was remixed and used in the movie as ‘Let’s Rock’. Now a great segment of the audience didn’t take to this version very fondly, but that was the least of the worries.
The accompanying video was harder to digest. In the movie this is the song where Kajol and Kareena have their bonding “fun” moments, and let their hair down. The song was picturised in a constructed set made to look like a karaoke pub. Shiny lights, guitar shaped stage, piano keys formed bar, waitresses in uniforms that half-resembled lingerie. So the good part is Kareena and Kajol looked wonderful, it was a delight watching them groove, but the filmmakers had to further mess it up by throwing the kids in. A thirteen-year old and her younger sibling in a pub? Hmm, must ask Australian embassy.
