I was reeling in horror after watching all 4 stories from the brilliant Tamil anthology Paava Kadhaigal. The story had such a deep impact on me that the entire world looked unusually gloomy and the anger towards the sad reality of the society we live in kept brewing inside uncomfortably. Everything about this anthology was top-notch; the acting, the direction, the background score, and even the use of silence. I was also happy and proud that Indian cinema has produced such high-quality content.
A few moments later I accidentally stumbled upon the trailer of Coolie no. 1 and I was again baffled. This time it was not the content that baffled me but the utter scarcity of it. Bollywood was yet again ready to release a movie that is essentially nothing but a depreciated remake of a hit movie of the 90s starring Govinda. However, the trailer itself gave me a glimpse of how embarrassingly bad the movie is going to be.
Is Bollywood living in a bubble? It reminded me of some senile old people who blatantly stick to their guns despite knowing that they are wrong and they need to adapt. They just live by their own rules believing that the world will instead adapt to them.
How else can you justify the movie Laxxmi Bomb? This was the remake of the Telugu movie Kanchana which by itself was bad to start with. However, when you see Laxxmi Bomb, you would realize Kanchana was miles better than this piece of crap. Akshay Kumar who is no stranger to such garbage movies once again showed that he is only as good as the script and the director. You can market the movie as much as you want but that is not going to turn a pile of shit into gold.
The same was the case with Khaali Peeli, Sadak 2 which had stars and star kids but no story or script ( Maybe they forgot that even stars and their kids need a goddamn script ). These two movies were not as bad as Laxxmi Bomb, yet it is difficult to fathom that an industry that has infinite resources cannot dish out decent content.
OTT’s on the other hand is producing content that is of global quality and can rival the Emmy award-winning Hollywood shows and series. Paatallok was another masterpiece produced by Amazon Prime after the very successful Mirzapur. Sony Liv which is relatively a new player in OTT came to everyone’s notice with the amazing series Scam 1992. The series was so good that it has the highest IMDB rating of 9.1. Hansal Mehta showed the world of the 90’s stock market and the rise and fall of Harshad Mehta played by the very talented Pratik Gandhi.
Owing to the lockdown and closure of theatres, Bollywood came to OTT’s but unsurprisingly with the same average stories, stale jokes, and out of the blue songs that have no connection whatsoever ( and not to forget the party song with the childish rap of Badshah.. why ? )
If Bollywood does not adapt to the demand for quality content, then very soon there will movies in theatres with no public heading out to watch them because at the price of a ticket they can watch high-quality content sitting at the comfort of their home.
Bollywood… it’s now or never
