Bollywood Ripoffs
A reader calls Bollywood’s bluff
Rahul Bhatia
Rahul Bhatia
01 Feb, 2010
I’d recently done a feature (Bollywood’s Script Thieves) on how the Hindi film industry lifts stories and tries to pass them off as original. Here’s a reader, sharing his disenchantment:
“I was so impressed by Bluffmaster that I even showed it to my foreigner friends as an example of a self-aware Bollywood movie with a post-modern twist. All that changed when a few weeks ago I saw the Argentinian movie, Nueve Reinas. Right from the beginning, it felt like a reincarnation, and I felt I knew the story beforehand. But by the end, it was so clear that Bluffmaster was simply lifted from this movie. I feel cheated, and hate the bloody filmmakers who made Bluffmaster. It leaves a bad taste to realise the fakeness of a movie I liked and for spoiling my appreciation of an original and cool movie, which I’d probably have liked if I hadn’t already seen an imitation.”
I’d recently done a feature (Bollywood’s Script Thieves) on how the Hindi film industry lifts stories and tries to pass them off as original. Here’s a reader, sharing his disenchantment:
“I was so impressed by Bluffmaster that I even showed it to my foreigner friends as an example of a self-aware Bollywood movie with a post-modern twist. All that changed when a few weeks ago I saw the Argentinian movie, Nueve Reinas. Right from the beginning, it felt like a reincarnation, and I felt I knew the story beforehand. But by the end, it was so clear that Bluffmaster was simply lifted from this movie. I feel cheated, and hate the bloody filmmakers who made Bluffmaster. It leaves a bad taste to realise the fakeness of a movie I liked and for spoiling my appreciation of an original and cool movie, which I’d probably have liked if I hadn’t already seen an imitation.”
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