Sunday, October 15, 2006

Back to the future - Remakes ka Zamana hai

"Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahin na mumkin hai"....as Shahrukh hams these immortal lines the front benchers in Sangeet theatre show their consent by a loud round of sonic whistles.Nope this is not a scene from a shady CD theatre in the by lanes of the old city but the reactions to King Khan's latest venture's promos being screened in a popular Hyderabadi theatre.Remakes,like item numbers, have become an integral part of Indian cinema.Ever since Shahrukh stammered and hammered his way to box office success in Devdas ,Bollywood directors have been flocking to the classics to remake them.So we have Ram Gopal Varma's Sholay,Farhan Akhtar's Don and very recently Jai Santoshi Maa. Waiting in the wings is the ice maiden(you will agree once you see her acting) Aishwariya Rai giving us her version of Umrao Jaaan.The Khan brothers,Sallu,Sohail and Arbaz are planning to make Amar Akbar Anthony,Anil Kapoor is trying to reincarnate Mr. India and Subhah Ghai is remaking Karz.
I am not against remakes but what I am definitely against is an excess of them.I already shudder at the prospect of Mithun Da re making all his movies.Bollywood like everything else in India always tries to take the easiest way out.If a love story is a hit we have a deluge of love stories ,if an action film is a hit we have bare torsoed heroes chasing rowdies ,if a sequel is a hit we have sequels galore and the list continues.What avid movie lovers like me want are good movies like Dor,Lage Raho Munna Bhai and Rang de Basanti.It was an Herculean effort to grow out of the eighties nineties' formula movies ...making an entire generation endure the pain all over again is not only unfair but down right cruel.As I type this my roomie tells me that Dev Saab is planning to re make The Jewel thief with himself in the lead....what next Rajnikanth remaking all his Tamil movies in Hindi?God save Bollywood.

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