OTT has exposed Bollywood, and how!
People spent the first half Covid discovering the beauty (and superiority) of regional cinema, from Malayalam to Telugu and Tamil fare. Then came the Korean tsunami. Bollywood resembled the emperor in his new clothes…
And so Radhe the unwanted bhai, Laxmi, Bhuj and many such silly movies were saved the ignominy of a box-office release…they came and went on OTT with not much of a splash. The makers tried to convince us of OTT-metrics that supposedly proved their 100-crore worthiness, but the audience now knows better.
I saw two movies today – well started two actually. Thinkalazhcha Nishchayam on Sony Liv and Meenakshi Sundareshwar on Netflix.
The first one was a lovely light-hearted look at a dysfunctional family that faces issues during the engagement of their second daughter. Beautifully written, and like most Malayalam movies, down-to-earth and believable. Brings a smile to one’s face at the end of it. Try to watch it.
The latter survived 20 minutes before I was forced to turn it off. The perks of OTT, rather than attempting to walk out of a theater once you have paid the full fare:)
Firstly, I didn’t quite understand why this wasn’t a Tamil movie. Set in Madurai, a traditional Tamil town, with both protagonists born and brought up in Tamil Nadu…there was no Hindi connection whatsoever. And so it looks downright stupid when you end up showing them speaking in Hindi (without any sort of accent as well), and worse – throwing in a Tamil “Ille” or “vango” in a vain attempt to build a bridge between the language of the movie and the characters.
Common – just make it in Tamil! We can live with subs, like we have for other good movies. However, the movie itself was going nowhere – blame the script, or screenplay, or the underdeveloped characters – but I lost interest just watching them trying to prove their “Tamilness” yet speaking Hindi as if it was second nature. A mess.
Anyways, the day after Deepavali is usually lethargic, and so the rest of the day was spent yawning and running after the little one, who seems to have derived a level of energy inversely proportional to that of his parents. Not complaining though..
See you tomorrow!