Dearth of good Hindi Cinema

It peeves me when i open the papers on Friday and do not see any good Hindi movie releasing that day. 2009 has been a bad year for all genres of Hindi cinema, no good, substantive or masala movie thus far. Perhaps the good directors and script writers are on a vacation an extended one at that. The only movies I watched in 2009 were Love Aaj Kal, Main Aur Mrs.Khanna, Whats Your Rashi and Paa. "Main Aur Mrs. Khanna" i dont know in a fit of what anger i decided to inflict upon me and my family the ordeal of sitting through the movie. It was an extremely stupid and predictable movie with big time underperformances by Salman and Kareena and unnecessary over acting by Sohail as usual.

Love Aaj Kal was a good When Harry Met Sally kind of romantic flick but came no where close to its director Imtiaz Ali's Jab We Met and is an over statement to call it a masala movie.

When i went to watch Paa i thought it would be blessed with the AB magic and would turn out to be at least as good as Black if not better but was sadly disappointed. The lack of a definite story line, too many themes and utterly confused relationships put into one script made a mockery of the message the director was trying to convey. Actually what the message was i am still not able to decipher.

That brings me to what i would call the best among these three movies (am not even counting Main Aur Mrs Khanna it was that bad) Whats Your Rashi. Ashutosh Gowarikar of Lagaan and Jodha Akbar fame came up with this unique movie highlighting the double faceted nature of most Indian families who want to display themselves as cool and modern but go back to square one when it comes to property feuds and marriages. The put offs about the movie were it was to long and had too many songs. Priyanka did her best to portray 12 different characters all with different personalities and behavior. However what impressed me most was the last line of the movie when Priyanka asks "So What's My Rashi" and after having sat through the whole three and half hour long movie it is difficult to recollect as to what Rashi did this character belong to. Wonderfully put the movie gives out the message to do hell with Rashis and horoscopes. Wish the movie was a little shorter in length and Ashu had used twelve different actrese rather than just one Priyanka playing all the actresses.

Anyways that brings me to the core point as to why 2009 has not had good movies at all? Is this the start of the decline of the rejuvenation that had set in Indian cinema in the last few years wit good movies. I bet it is not coz we Hindi cinema has survived for more time than any other film industry in the world other than Hollywood and hopefully the movie makers will come out of this slump. Yet it remains a mystery if movies with different themes would work in Hindi cinema. A trend was beginning to set in with the movies like Munnabhai Lage Raho, RDB, Page 3 and Fashion but will this trend continue is to be seen.