What is wrong with Indian cinema?

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I am seething. I have had to walk out of two movies midway in the past one week despite trying very, very hard to bear the inanity being relentlessly thrown at me.

What is wrong with Indian cinema? Specifically what is wrong with Indian directors? I can understand (and maybe even forgive) a bad movie. It can after all always be explained by the difference of sensibilities argument. But not a lazy movie. The sheer laziness of some of the recent releases frustrates me to no end.

Let's look at some of this year's releases. Mere Brother Ki Dulhan, it's the prototype of the standard mostly-mindless, frivolous rom-coms. No problem with that. But hey humour can be well-written too. Why make it so stale and so sloppy?

Or the other dud of this year - Dum Maro Dum. It's like the film maker thought a little bit of style, some snazzy camera work, a couple of washboard abs (and the paunchy one of the lead actor cleverly concealed) and the audience will pardon the giant loopholes of the script. One would think that after the serious drubbing such movies have received in the not-so-distant past, directors would be a little more careful but as it turned out they still harbour the hope that they can get away with it.

And now on to the movie that I walked out on last Friday in utter exhaustion. It had been a long week and I still found the will to go for a late-ish evening show. Though the trailers had dimmed my hope, the fact that it had the very gifted Pankaj Kapoor had the helm gave me some faith. But it was an unmitigated disaster. Half an hour into the movie, and my friend and I were nodding our heads in sheer disbelief. It is such a lazily written story - implausible and inconsistent. And what makes it far worse is how pompous and self-importance it is. It is almost like that smug smirk that Shahid Kapoor has for almost the entire length of the movie, is what the director had for his audience. As a cine-lover, it makes me angry to think that even an intelligent artist like Mr Kapoor thinks so little of his viewers.

I love Hindi cinema and I will always defend its oddities and excesses. I have a lousy day at work or an unnecessary fight with a close friend and I buy a ticket hoping to find a story, a few laughs, some good music and if I'm lucky some great moments that will stay with me long after the evening is over. In return of such devotion, the least I expect from the directors is honest, sincere effort. The arrogance that lets them think they can serve us quarter baked fare and we will be ok with it, is irksome and mildly insulting. I wish for cinema's sake that such movies fail so miserably that next times someone thinks of passing off a bad story in the name of 'A timeless love story' or some such similar gibberish, they are rudely stopped and forced to go back to the writing desk.