Hindi Movie Songs: Best Timepass

As the New Year arrives, let’s hope, this be a new and fresh beginning for Bollywood too?

In recent times, the industry has been experimenting with concepts and exploring new avenues. They've been baby steps until now with a few exceptional movies like That Girl in Yellow Boots (2011), Rang De Basanti (2006), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), Black (2005) and Taare Zameen Par (2007). These kinds of movies have taken Bollywood in a new direction from the slapstick comedies and action movies that are the usual.

Unfortunately, the audience in India does not allow a lot of experimentation with Hindi movies. I don’t blame the audience entirely. Bollywood is yet to master the art of storytelling, or rather, actually having a story to tell.

Robot was a step into the high tech computer graphics and animation world. This could’ve been a big leap for the Indian cinema but all it was, was a disaster! Yes it ran along the same lines as those of typical Hindi movies, full of action and drama and putting forward concepts that you really want to believe in but just cant. But Robot took it further by taking the not so good Hollywood movies and made them worse. It was like terminator came back and this time, he is dancing to Songs too! Even the basic concept of a robot developing emotions comes from the Hollywood movie, Bicentennial Man.

Originality is not one of Bollywood’s strengths. I think that’s the first thing that the Indian cinema needs to focus on. The second would be to make a story believable. Take Inception for example. The basic concept of the movie is so ridiculous that one is compelled to ask if the writer of the story was on hallucinogenic substances. But the audience came out of the theatre and the first thing they did was go looking for a ‘totem’ to make sure they are not trapped in their dreams. This ability to make people believe in the story you tell them is completely missing in Hindi movies.

Another thing that really needs to be changed is the songs. There’s a new trend for having at least one item number in every movie and that is fairly acceptable. But the whole ‘dancing around the countryside’s and romancing on the hills even when they were no where even close to them before the song started’ is getting pretty old pretty fast. Even if the songs are decent, the picture of the cheesy dance moves turns you off.

But it’s a new year and as I said, a new start. Let’s hope that Bollywood is going to pull up its socks and stop making a fool out of the audience.