Bollywood

Bollywood is the informal name given to the popular Mumbai-based film industry in India.

Genre conventions

Bollywood films are usually musicals. Few movies are made without at least one song-and-dance number. Indian audiences expect full value for their money, with a good entertainer generally referred to as paisa vasool, (literally, "money's worth"). There has even been a quirky caper chick-flick - a rarity in this male-dominated industry -called Paisa Vasool. Songs and dances, love triangles, comedy and dare-devil thrills—all are mixed up in a three-hour-long extravaganza with an intermission. Such movies are called masala movies, after the Hindi word for a spice mixture, masala. Like masalas, these movies are a mixture of many things.

Related Topics:
Musical - Paisa - Comedy

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Plots tend to be melodramatic. They frequently employ formulaic ingredients such as star-crossed lovers and angry parents, love triangles, corrupt politicians, kidnappers, conniving villains, courtesans with hearts of gold, long-lost relatives and siblings separated by fate, dramatic reversals of fortune, and convenient coincidences.

Related Topics:
Melodramatic - Courtesans with hearts of gold

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There have always been films with more "artistic" aims and more sophisticated stories (for example, many of the films of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Guru Dutt, Shyam Benegal, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, and Gulzar among others). They often lost out at the box office to movies with more mass appeal. However, Bollywood is changing. Current films are increasingly likely either to break the mold or to ironically subvert it. There is now a significant audience of young, educated, urban Indians who want to watch Indian films, but demand a different presentation.

Related Topics:
Satyajit Ray - Mrinal Sen - Guru Dutt - Shyam Benegal - Hrishikesh Mukherjee - Gulzar

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It should also be said that a fair number of films with mass-appeal are either estimable simply as well-crafted amusements (which is no small matter in an anxious world) or even artistic achievements in their own way. Any fan of Bollywood movies will be able to list films that he/she regards as transcending the run-of-the-mill masala movie.

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