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In recent years Hollywood filmmakers have pilfered both the look of Japanese animation and the action (and action directors) of Hong Kong cinema. Having bled both of these utterly dry and left the tired and lifeless husks to stink up our movie screens (hello, Matrix Revolutions), filmmakers need another nation’s cinema to pillage. India, the only country in the World that makes more movies a year than America, would seem to be an obvious choice. So Far though, curry-flavoured Hollywood flicks have conspicuously failed to appear. Britain, with its large Indian population, has produced a handful of crossover movies in the last few years. Local hit East Is East told the story of two modern Birmingham boys unhappy at the prospect of traditional arranged marriages, and gave some box-office appeal to Jimi Mistry, who then went Stateside to appear with Heather Graham in box-office flop The Guru. The film, a formulaic though fairly enjoyable romcom that attempted to blend Bollywood musical numbers with an average boy-meets-girl, girl-is-secretly-porn-star, boy-gets-girl-back-again plot, did better in the UK with white audiences who didn’t mind a few watered-down Bollywood trappings with their Friday-night multiplex diversion. But when I mentioned the movie to a Gujarati work colleague she was less than impressed, dismissing it as a half-hearted rip-off rather than an affectionate homage. The producers of East Is East had another hit in the UK with Bend It Like Beckham, a tale of football-kitted teenage girls and racial misunderstandings. The film even had a successful US release, despite Americans not knowing whom Beckham was, or indeed, how one might Bend It like him. The movie led to luscious Parminder Nagra securing a regular slot on E. R. But it was her co-star Keira Knightley who went on to much bigger things as the female lead in smash-hit Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl. The Problem for anyone in Hollywood trying to tap into a bit of Bollywood magic is that the factors distinct to mainstream Indian films don’t travel well. First, all Indian films are very, very long. And I don’t mean long like The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, we’re talking a simple love-triangle romantic comedy with 90 minutes of plot stretched out to four hours. The other element essential in all Bollywood movies is the addition of four or five shakin’ musical numbers. Now, don’t make the common mistake in thinking that all Bollywood movies are therefore musicals - far from it. The raison d’etre of a musical is for the characters to sing and dance, whereas in a Bollywood movie the music is just another constituent, along with cheesy kung fu, villains with scary facial hair and polyester flares hideous enough to make even Rudy Ray Moore recoil in horror. The American equivalent would be something along the lines of, say a scene that might have appeared in Bad Boys II. Rather than just telling Will Smith’s character to admit to Martin Lawrence they were having an affair, Gabrielle Union would instead break into song while assorted cops, family members and the evil Cuban drug lord performed a tight backing dance behind her. Then the camera would zoom in tight on Smith’s eyes and elaborate shootout/kung fu battle would commence, involving Lambretta scooters, station wagons, helicopters and an old guy on an elephant. So for Bollywood thrills, you quite rightly need to go back to the source. But where to begin, in the literally thousands of films produced by this vast country? Well, if 1970’s exploitation is you thing – and if you read this site, I hope it is – then a fun place to start is with the Masala film. Fans of Indian cuisine will recognise masala as the name for ‘mixed spice’, and that should clue you in to the content of a typical example - a bit of everything. Your average masala movie mixes drama, comedy, adventure, romance, fashion, social commentary, martial arts, explosive action and funky rump-shakin’ sounds into a delicious celluloid confection that’s quite unlike anything you’ll find anywhere else. We at Steamed Prawn Buns consider ourselves to be a multicultural bunch with a well-developed International palette, so may we recommend the following dishes you might like to try… Qurbani Disco Dancer Don The Great Gambler Ashanti |
