We have always wondered why one of the biggest Bollywood movie distributors Eros International associates itself with Hindi movies that are lifted from successful Hollywood movies.
Over the last couple of years, Eros has been involved with at least three high profile Hindi movies that are outright lifts of Hollywood movies – Partner (Hitch), Heyy Baby (Three Men and a Baby) and God Tussi Great Ho (Bruce Almighty).
In its latest Annual Report, Eros claims:
Eros expects its Directors and employees to exercise high ethical and moral standards at all times whilst representing the Group.
So, why then is Eros (established in 1977) not doing adequate due diligence on the Bollywood movies it distributes to ensure that they are original works and not lifts of Hollywood movies?
By the way, Eros International’s stock is down nearly 35% over the last 52-weeks on the London AIM.
Eros International also owns 51% of Ayngaran, a UK-based Tamil film distributor and producer.
Ayngaran is the producer of the upcoming Rajinikanth-Aishwarya Rai Tamil movie Enthiran (previously Robot).
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The directors at Eros (and similar production houses) perhaps have very little clue, if the script is original, ‘inspired’ or downright lifted.
I have seen Hitch and Partner, and Govinda and Salman Khan havent done well at all. Heyy Baby too is not funny at all, and yet it is supposed to have made some money.
Fortunately, inspite of these big houses funding mediocrity, there is hope in the form of small-budget, yet fairly original and engaging movies such as “A Wednesday”, “Mumbai Meri Jaan”, “Welcome to Sajjanpur” and “Rock On”.
Two other movies, released some time back, and worth a watch, are “Dharm” and “Black Friday”.
While these may not be great movies, and not fully free of cliches, they are still good (and some very good) movies, and make their point in their own ways.
Surely none of these would have been released in the US of A. But if you can get hold of them, do watch them, and of course, please post the reviews.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
We’ll try to get hold of the movies you suggest and maybe even review a few of them.
We watched Black Friday and found it to be an above average movie.
We are also planning on reviewing some Kannada movies for a change. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), they are not easily available in the U.S.
Hindi and Tamil movies are routinely released in theatres on both the East Coast and West coast but Kannada movies rarely make it here & the desi video stores in most areas don’t stock them.
the movies that guruprasad.s suggested are excellent and i am surprised that you haven’t seen them,dharm was among the best films of previous year and a wednesday and mumbai meri jaan along with aamir are the best movies of bollywood this year.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
As you once wrote (a few months back), most of the Hindi films that release in the U.S. are the big-budget, high profile ones with stars like SRK, Aamir Khan or Akshay Kumar.
As we said earlier, we watched Black Friday (it had a limited release).
Based on the recommendation of SearchIndia.com blog readers, we purchased the DVD of A Wednesday but for some reason it’s not playing on our home theatre.
In my previous comment on this article, I have written “…Black Friday..”, instead of “…Black and White…”.
I had the latter in my mind when I listed those movies.
Black Friday is of course a good movie, and which you have already reviewed.
Black and White was released in March 2008 in India, featuring newcomer Anurag Sinha, grand veteran Habib Tanvir (a veteran of theatres, but has acted in very few Bollywood movies), Anil Kapoor (in a near no-nonsense role), and the bankable Shefali Shetty (earlier Shefali Chaya).
Not perfect, but watachable still.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
We can’t recollect Black & White making it to theatres in the U.S. (perhaps it had a limited release here). We’ll look for it at the Indian stores.