Bollywood- Well isn’t the name itself
copied (oh sorry, “inspired”) from Hollywood?
Ever since the 90s, Bollywood has remade a
lot of movies from hollywood, kollywood, tollywood, malluwood,sandalwood and
god knows from how many other woods ! Just in this year, top grossers of Bollywood-
Bodygaurd and Singham are remakes of South Indian movies. And before that
movies like- Ghajini, Garam masala, Hera Pheri, Wanted were all quite
successful remakes. Then movies like Humraaz, Murder, Naqaab were all remade
from Hollywood movies. Well it is definitely not a bad thing to remake, not at
all! But copying someone else’s work and taking the credit for themselves?
As we saw in the list above, these are all
remade/ copied from movies. But I’m going to talk about 3 movies which are copied
from TV series and not really many are aware of them.First in the list is the movie NEWYORK 2009
directed by Kabir khan and written by Aditya Chopra.The movie was a hit and was praised for its ‘fresh’ story. But no one realised that it’s a blatant copy from the TV series LOST.
The story is about a taxi driver (Neil
Nithin Mukesh) in New York who is arrested by the cops and they ask him to go
undercover, because they suspect his college buddy (john Abraham) is a
terrorist now. So Neil is forced by the FBI agent to catch up his old friend
and track his activities. Then he realises John is actually a terrorist and he
tries to stop him. But in the end, John’s bomb plan is stopped and he dies.
LOST is my all-time favourite TV series. It
is escapist television at its best! New York is copied from the 21st
episode of Season 1 of LOST.
In the show, Sayid jarrah is captured by a CIA agent
and she asks him to go undercover because Sayid’s friend when he was studying
in Cairo University is a suspected terrorist now. The story is same as I described
above for New York. Here also in the climax, Sayid reveals to his
friend that he is an undercover , when his friend is about to bomb a building and
he stops him. It ends up with his friend's death and mission is aborted. To clear
the doubts, this episode was aired in 2005 and New York was released in 2009.
There is also a particular scene in New York
which is copied not from a Tv series, but from the movie Crash. The scene is
like two police officers stop a car and they molest a lady while her
helpless male friend watches. That is a rip off from the 2004 movie CRASH.
Let’s move on to the second movie in the
list which is I hate Luv stories. If you hate Love stories, this is the movie
you should skip first. It is a cheesy love story written and directed by Punit
Malhotra. So is the story of this movie also copied from a TV series? No... Why?
Because the movie has got no story!
But most of the scenes from this movie
(including the climax) are copied from the popular sitcom HOW I MET YOUR
MOTHER.
First one I would like to mention is HOT BADTAMEEZ scale mentioned in
the movie which is purely copied from the HOT CRAZY scale of Barney Stinson.
Then you have so many small things in the
movie like, a wingman; pickup lines which are all lifted from the TV show.
Especially the “I’m watching you” sign portrayed by Barney is copied here.
They even lifted a joke totally from
HIMYM. Check out the conversation below.
Robin: My father was a cigar fanatic, it was the only
way to get his attention.
Barney: Father issues. Hot.
Robin: I know... I was this close to being a huge
slut.
Barney: Slut would have been better, but I'll settle
for bro. Especially now that Ted's with Victoria and can't drink. Because he's
pregnant. Cause he's the girl.
Robin: Oh, come on, Ted can't be pregnant. You need to
have sex to get pregnant.
Barney: What up! Freeze frame high five!
The same joke is copied and that is self-explanatory
in the image below:
At last there is the Climax scene in “I
hate Luv stories”, where in Sonam kapoor is watching a romantic movie and in
that movie, the hero is running across the streets to meet his girl and propose to
her. At the same time, Imran khan in real is running down the roads to theatre
to meet sonam and propose. So both the scenes are shown simultaneously. This
concept is a rip off from HIMYM season 5 episode 23. It is the same thing what
Ted does.
Moving on to the last movie in the list:
Game (2011) written by Althea Delmas Kaushal and directed by Abhinay deo (yeah the
guy who made Delhi belly). The movie is not really a total rip off, but the
crux of the movie is. It is about a murder mystery. And that is exactly the
same from the TV series MONK from the episode “Mr.Monk is underwater”.
In the movie, Everyone believes Mr.Malhotra killed himself by shooting in the head,
because everyone heard the gun shot when it happened and the door was locked
from inside, so there is no way anyone could have entered. But what actually
happened is his maid went and shot him first with a gun fitted with silencer
and then she places a firecracker inside and lit it ans as she comes out , she locks
the door from outside. When the firecracker bursts, everyone thinks that it is the
gun shot sound and they break open the door and go inside to see him dead. At that
time, the maid secretly slips the door key into the dead body's pocket. The scene is
exactly the same in MONK except for the characters.
To read more about the monk episode you can visit : http://monk.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Monk_Is_Underwater
To conclude, why are our writers so much
depended on others works? Are they seriously out of ideas? I don’t understand, because if you take the case of MONK, it is a TV series where each episode has
a unique murder and it is solved by the end of the episode and there are more than
100 episodes of it. So if they could think of 100 such stories, why can’t our
writers think of one story properly?! Well let’s just hope at least in 2012 we
get some really good and original movies in the country.
Thank you all for liking my first post J and I wish you a Merry Christmas!
