Will Bollywood globalise?

Bollywood pundits are perturbed whether the West would accept its extravagant melodrama as entertainment or not!

This is a crucial time for Bollywood in Hollywood. Mira Nair has just come out with a big film, Vanity Fair, which has opened to a mixed response. Gurinder Chadha's hefty colourful homage to Bollywood, Bride and Prejudice, makes its appearance in Britain next month and will be screened in US during Christmas. And Deepa Mehta is all set to release her Water, which talks about Hindu widows, at the yearend.

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Is Hollywood ready to welcome Bollywood and all that it represents?
Looks like not. The coldest and harshest response to Nair's otherwise spick and span epic Vanity Fair has perhaps established the fact that Bollywood flicks are not up to Hollywood standard. Says a young cosmopolitan Indian actor, "I saw Vanity Fair with the audience in a theatre in New York. The Americans were laughing at it. It's time we stop thrusting Bollywood down their throats. They're not digesting it.

"Nair got away with such artistic licence in Monsoon Wedding because the whole film worked. In Vanity Fair, the Indian portions are a complete washout."

Mira Nair's Vanity Fair received mixed response

The Indian bits in

Vanity Fair

include a song and dance in the middle of an English banquet where a group of English women dance together to do a typical item number from a Hindi film. At the end, Nair departs from the novel to take her protagonist Becky to India amidst elephants and peacocks.

Still, Vanity Fair, budgeted at $35 million, is expected to make a neat enough profit to keep the studio happy.

The box office is also awaiting the response to Bride and Prejudice. Since the film is a full-blown song-to-song dance-to-dance homage to Bollywood cinema, it is essential for Bride and Prejudice to get a wide audience in the West. Otherwise dreams of Bollywood legitimising there would not be possible.