So, after my second Dilwale viewing, I really started to notice the, shall we call it “borrowing” from other media products? I caught exact matches with How I Met Your Mother, Love Actually, and P.S. I Love You. This is different from the other “borrowing” Indian films do, the subtle winks to the audience because they know you know they know where it came from originally. Like in Johnny Gaddar, when our hero solves his alibi issue by watching an Amitabh movie and realizing he can use the same tactic. No, this is when you use the best part of a little known western pop culture product, hoping that no one will catch you at it.
Sometimes this feels kind of naughty and gleeful, like when Salaam-E-Ishq lifts the best part of an old Doris Day and Rock Hudson movie, because how many people in the world will have seen both (just me, probably. But you should really watch Send Me No Flowers! Tony Randall is brilliant in it).
(Really, watch it! It’s fun!)
But in this case, it is really really recent films, and fairly well-known (in the West) moments from them. It’s not like the director hunted through his vast video library to find something really good, or like he fell in love with something he stumbled across on TV at 3am and decided to sneak it into the film. This is feels more like a college student pulling an all nighter trying to finish a final paper and giving into temptation and just cutting and pasting from wikipedia.
I would actually be, like, angry and disappointed about this, but on the other hand, 5 months! Rohit Shetty only had 5 months to make a whole movie! So I’m more on the side of “if the Professor assigns an impossible workload, he should expect students to cheat a little!”
(by the way, this article has a few more I missed. But I caught P.S. I Love You and they didn’t, so I can still hold my head up high. Be warned, they go into some detail which might spoil something for you!)
dontcallitbollywood 