Do you honestly care about production values (in your sense of the term)? I don’t. I often prefer cheaply made American independent and foreign films to the Hollywood blockbusters. Furthermore, it’s now possible to make a cheap film that looks very good. The camera work will be good, the sets will be just real locations, and the lighting will be correct. The only extra thing you’ll get from blockbuster films are the CGI effects. I don’t care about those.
The question is not whether I care about them. You brought it up as a criticism of Bollywood movies. In any case, the mass American market doesn’t agree with your standards of what makes a good movie, so you might try to look beyond your personal taste to figure out why Blywood movies aren’t mass marketed here.
I don’t know, and I don’t care, why Bollywood films aren’t marketed here. If I did, I would probably come up with a reason that had more to do with American companies being scared that their markets might be taken over and less to do with the qualily of the films. I’m somebody who sees a lot of various sorts of films, not a film distribution executive, so I don’t have to worry about how to make as much money for my film company as possible. I was replying to Shagnasty’s request “Nominations are still open for an actual Indian film that is good.” The films I listed are good films.
I must confess to having a certain fondness of Bollywood movies. Yes, they are cheesy, the stories aren’t always good and there is always at least one song and dance routine in every movie. On top of that they tend to be extremely long. Average Bollywood movie runs 3 hours.
But as someone has already touched upon, Bollywood caters to the massive Indian poor and uneducated market. Indian actors often become deified. Literally, images will be made of actors which Indians will have at home and make little offerings to.
When it comes to the scripts and stories, they will often plagiarize. I saw the Bollywood version of Tarentino’s Reservoir Dogs which was fantastic in its cheesiness. Unlike the original, there was of course a couple of musical numbers thrown in, dance and all. If I recall correctly, the name of the movie in Hindi was “Kranji” or “Kranti” or something like that. It was just so funny!
I also had the pleasure of actually going to the cinema Mumbai. An Indian colleague asked me if I wanted to go after work to see a new movie called “Sivaji the Boss” which happened to be a Tamil movie with actor Rajini who is generally considered the Clint Eastwood of India. Basically a tough guy. But unlike Eastwood, his toughness is sooooo exaggerated. In one seen he throws his sunglasses in the air, shoots and kills 3 or 4 bad guys, then looks up in time for the glasses to land perfectly on his face. Fight scenes are so over the top. Found this link on Youtube showing a typical Rajini fight:
It is so cheesy it’s funny the way the bodies go flying.
As for the actual cinema experience, it was something else. The cinema was completely packed with people. If I recall correctly the tickets were only 10 rupees (US$0.25).
If you are one of those who are irritated by people talking in the cinema, this isn’t for you. People were cheering and jeering depending on the scene and dancing along when the musical scenes started. I confess I couldn’t help being caught up in the excitement.
I don’t think Bollywood movies will ever be popular in the West, and I think you need to spend some time in India to understand and thereby appreciate a Bollywood movie which so often is the David versus Goliath kind of story. And the poor uneducated masses of India appreciate this kind of underdog story, not to mention the need for a fun catchy tune. Much of India’s music industry revolves around Bollywood where a tune can become a major hit when featured in a movie.
Having said that, there are some serious movies out of India as well. Movies which cater more to the educated. And some of those can be very good. Although even those films can’t seem to get away from including a musical number or two in them.
Further East, the Hong Kong film industry has dominated for a long time. Most, but not all, are Kung Fu movies. These have influenced Hollywood. I’m sure everyone has heard of Hong Kong movie stars like Jackie Chan and Jet Li just to mention a few. HK pioneered fight scenes and Hollywood learned much from them. But again HK movies although not as cheesy as Bollywood, seem to be type set. Sure there are some non-Kung Fu movies, but they tend to be very limited and cater only to the Chinese. (Footnote: HK is also known for their soft porn, but even those often contain Kung Fu like the Ghost stories movies. Also the HK soft porn are often very funny. One of my favorites is Sex & Zen where a man gets his small human penis replaced with a horse penis. It is hysterical!)
The best films out of Japan are animation. In the old days the classic animations like Totoro comes to mind. Today, they are making some incredible stuff with digital animation. The Final Fantasy movies have some amazing graphics.
In the past ten years though the Koreans have started to dominate main stream films. In Singapore where I live, you do get all the Hollywood movies, but there is also a lot of Korean films. One of my favorites was Brotherhood, about two brothers who end up on opposite sides during the Korean war. Fantastic movie.