Consumer forums for Hopeless Movie-Making

My weekend started a bit early. I, with some of my colleagues, went to watch the movie “Dil Bole Hadippa”. Though I wasn’t expecting much from the movie anyway, half an hour into the movie and I realized that it was a criminal waste of time. Since it was a team outing, we decided to watch the movie till the end; also hoping that hopefully the movie would gain some steam only to realize later that we were flogging a dead horse.

I would say that I frequent the theatres. However, for some people coming to a theater becomes very difficult. For example, a senior colleague, who has a three-year old daughter came to the theater after a couple of months only to watch this idiotic portrayal of stereotypes-cricket and of course Sachin Tendulkar, a separated couple (which is not divorced and the constituents still feel and care for each other) that reunites in the end, India-Pakistan, Punjab and London (Bollywood knows only these two places) discrimination of women, and to top it all the pedagogic speech by the protagonist at the end of the movie. Mind you, all it takes for the separated couple is a win in a cricket match. And how could I forget the hero who, in spite of staying in London has all the Indian values, falls for a ‘gaon ki gori’.

While watching the movie, I was hoping that there should be a consumer forum for consumers like us to sue the makers of a film like this-who take the consumers for granted and abuse such an effective medium of entertainment. After all, a movie is a product and we are the consumers. I know it may be impossible for us to have guidelines for differentiating a good movie from a bad one. Nonetheless, we need to find ways by which idiocy and stereotypical portrayal do not become the virtue of film making ‘coz the box office verdict no longer seems to be a deterrent.