Besides what's wrong with a little ridiculousness? Some of the special FX I've seen in memes of indian movies look like they take a decent amount of imagination to visualize
Note that I have not seen any indian cinema, no idea where to start with that, other than to say that the Bollywood format (and musicals in general) has little appeal to me...
I don’t know what changed but now I’m not just down with it I’m actually a big fan. I’m there to be entertained - give me Gesamtkunstwerk; I’ll suspend belief for those few brief moments, give me wonderful melodies and over-the-top sights. All types of art each have their place! I mean, we put up with soliloquys in Shakespeare plays, we cherish fanciful wordplay, why not give me songs!
s/belief/disbelief/
So as an Indian I feel like this shouldn't be generalized as the 'image' in people's minds of what an Indian movie is. The over the top parts should be considered as a genre of its own
We’ll do that as long as you do us a similar favor for Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich.
The Bombay production houses have gone Hollywood-lite making movies for affluent westernized Indian class which as it turns out is not profitable. I am for artsy Indian movies but at the end of the day, this is commercial undertaking and the film crew and its producers should make money out of it.
As far as FX quality goes, the recently released Bhramastra sets the high watermark for Indian films. The FX are Hollywood level...probably because it's made by Disney's Indian film studios (Star Studios) and the FX were outsourced to some of the same FX studios working on Marvel films. (And as a side bonus, there isn't any of the weird fetishization of British/white women or obsequious political pandering to the India's current ultra-nationalist government like there are in RRR.)
As an example of the difference in FX quality: in RRR, you're always aware of the artificial nature of the CGI because it doesn't "blend" into the world around it; the CGI sits on top of the world and is clearly separate from the action on screen. The animal FX are especially bad. In Bhramastra, the "astra" that give people various powers blend in with, light up, and shade the world around them even though they're purely CGI.
Malayalam Films : Known for their subtlety and craft in film making, and obsession with crime novels. Dhrishyam part 1 & 2 are like no movies I’ve seen in Hollywood.
Hindi Films: Or Bollywood movies, known for their big stars, great attention to set pieces of grand dance sequence s and decent romantic comedies / sports movies. Hard to pick one as nothing has shined recently. I’d give “Zindagi Na milega dubara” / “Chak dhe” a look. Again nothing spectacular recently unless you want to watch a classic from the seventies “Sholay”
Tamil movies : Gritty movies about inner city gangs / social upheaval or focus on stellar music/dance romantic comedies and major action blockbusters. From recent years I’d give “Vada Chennai”, or “Vikram Vedha” a chance for gritty urban movies. Or just the most recent action blockbuster “Vikram”. Which has a really good score.
Telugu movies (the original language for RRR) : I’d give “Pushpa” a look before watching CGI drenched RRR.
+1 for Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara - one of my all time favorites. For a more recent Bollywood film, Kapoor and Sons is pretty good.
Note there are critically acclaimed Malayalam Movies that not everyone would like (Eg: Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum, Maheshinte Prathikaram), they are so slow paced that average viewer would doze off. There's a perception that more realistic is always better. But that's not always true. IMO Tamil middle budget movies get pacing better than Malayalam, for average audience at least.
Yeah this movie was made for a very specific audience going through a certain age and point in life, ('buddy road movie' but made for Indian millennials) hardly a great work of art.
First it was 'Dil Chahta Hai', when the Indian millennials were of college age or around that time. A movie about three friends hanging out and dreaming of the future they will have with the kind of partners they would hope to be with.
'Zindagi Na milega dobara' is about a early-mid career Indian millennials facing marriage, work issues. It's not a bad movie but the popularity and greatness of it comes from it being apropos for Indian millennials.
On the top of that there is a 'class' thing going on here, where RRR's target audience is a different class, and have an Inglorious Bastard style experience. Just like 'Dil Chahta Hai'/'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara' are for the educated millennials class.
For other folks reading I always recommend Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ) as the Bollywood movie to start with. It’s a bit silly and over the top (especially the fight sequences) but it has a lot of heart. I miss old Bollywood movies like this that actually had lots of singing and dancing. And it set a record for most Filmfare awards won when it came out so critics obviously liked it too.
Sometimes I wish people would talk about really old Bollywood too. Old Devdas, Barsaat, etc. There are some great movies there. I like Satyajit Ray a lot too (I know he isn’t Bollywood) but I wish people could see greatness in old Bollywood as well. I just rewatched Guide recently for example. Still a good movie.
They are all just films, just like Hollywood makes different genres, these countries make films in every genre. At least the Indian film industry is a behemoth large enough to be able to make movies in every genre.
(I haven’t seen this one yet though)
Why are you embarassed?
The embarrassment is for the comparably unsophisticated tastes, and I don't share the feeling but I can understand. It's like everyone discovering that your uncle is addicted to something cheap and insubstantial that only children like, like junk food.
I'm taking your "believable American action scenes" with a big semi full of salt.
Let's have the semi jump off the end of an unfinished highway overpass and do a barrel roll. While the truck is slo-mo flying through the air we'll cut to a ground shot of a middle-aged dad about to salt some meat on the grill, but the barrel-rolling truck overhead spills just the perfect amount of salt on his burgers so he just looks up and shrugs. Finally we'll cut back to the massive explosion as the truck hits the ground.
In American films, if someone does extreme, superhuman stunts, the filmmaker typically feels pressure to explain that the character is actually superhuman in some way and not an ordinary guy with an office job. And he or she will be in peak physical shape.
In Indian film, an utterly ordinary character in "office job" physical condition will catch bullets, run faster than a full speed train, etc. No pressure to explain the seeming contradiction with ordinary reality. The film could be considered a romance, having ordinary people as protagonists, and these characters would be doing the above-mentioned stunts as part of the plot.
These aren't hard and fast rules, both sides of the divide deviate from them, but that's been my observation.
this is a feature and not a bug. The urge for excessive exposition is so tiring. Not everything needs an origins story, explanation, or a prequel. Hollywood has been leaning on that formula and you can see it in the product - the movies have become tiresome.
Nobody needs an explanation for their “powers”. Excessively qualifying a character more likely burdens then than lifts them. RRR was such a refreshing, thrilling watch parallel to Mad Max: Fury Road.
Kind of like anime...
This is precisely what Americans love about it though. Indian cinema comes from a completely different tradition than Hollywood, and it’s a breath of fresh air. Action movies should be more silly. It’s just entertainment.
A great analogy is to the Ugandan action films as well (go watch “Who Killed Captain Alex” right now if you haven’t). They are doing something completely new that breaks the Hollywood tropes. We really need more of this, because the American film industry has reached a creative dead end.
In fact, Tom Cruise actually performs most of his stunts, especially for the MI movies. It's kind of his thing; while the context of the stunt might be CGI the action itself is real.
He's worth more than a billion dollars, so he can afford to pay specialists to train him; he supposedly spent over a year learning to hold his breath for several minutes just for the water tank scene.
That’s why I like them. So refreshing.
Action movies have always been unashamed about having an element of lowbrow populism. You can enjoy seeing bad guys get their asses kicked in The Matrix even if you've never heard of plato's cave - and there's nothing wrong with that.
overthetop cgi is equated with bollywood, to my knowledge
No. The overwhelming majority of Bollywood movies don't have much CGI. And RRR isn't a Bollywood movie to begin with.