The comparison with Cruise is so off the mark....For Shahrukh, all the money earned from the movies, from dancing at billionaire's kids weddings, from endorsements of soft drinks, from hosting game shows (Who wants to be a millionaire, Indian version) etc, hasn't been enough.

This Troy Donahue of India has now come up with this latest tripe - Om Shanti Om- unwillling to move out of comfort zone, more prancing only this time around with a bit of peekaboo thrown in.

The only reason he succeeds is India's strict censorship that does not allow kissing on screen, enforces no nudity, or otherwise the floodgates would have been opened. Those thriving on pretty looks alone would have been finished off. Only those with real acting talent would have emerged..

By comparison, Cruise recent work includes "Collateral", "War of the Worlds" and now "Lions for Lamb", not just diverse works but matured that Shahrukh cannot hope to match.

raj

Thanks Andrew Leonard for picking up on this one. SRK is hilarious in the movie. The jokes - embedded even in the clip you posted - are very much self-referential. There hasn't been such a major piss-take by a film industry of itself in a VERY long time.

Regarding the video clip of Mr. Stomach & his muscles: it looks like a typical MTV video of a star dancing around with a large supporting cast of dancers, a la Michael Jackson's "Thriller." Frankly, the whole concept has gotten boring. This kind of "music" video also allows telegenic no-talents like Jessica Simpson to shine, while real musicians languish. But I digress.

I do take issue with Mr. Leonard's question of whether Mr. Khan's flaunting of his muscular body might be, "a pathetic attempt by a 42-year-old man to hang onto the illusion of youth." Whatever else you might want to say about that video clip or the film, the guy is in great shape. There's nothing pathetic about that, and he's not engaging in any illusions. There are old-looking 20 year-olds with flabby bodies, and youthful looking 40 year-olds with muscular bodies. It is what it is.

let's talk about that HAIR!

The lack of kissing, nudity and all the sexual frosting that seems to be the entire content of a great bulk of American cinema is what I love about Bollywood. I won't claim to have any great knowledge of Bollywood movies - really, I have none - but from what I've seen, it's all eye candy and I just really love that. At least they're not ashamed of telling the same story over and over, now with singing, now with dancing. It's great. I just wish my local Family Video actually carried some of them.

SRK, as he is called by his fans, fits the current self-image of Indian youth - brash and oh-so- self-congratulatory. The video you have shown is about as authentically Indian as Thriller or Brittney Spears is all-American.

The old Bollywood movies and the new ones are different in two important ways: one, the old movies were true to the Indian ethos - progressive about religion and women's roles, while also being authentic about Indian cultural mores - respect for the elderly, and concern for the less privileged for instance. In contrast the new movies are all about being as "western" as possible, but wrapped in Indian platitudes. The other difference is that the old movies did not pretend to be anything more than what they were. In contrast the new movies are simply pretentious.

The tragedy is that the purveyors of these movies and the viewers are not even aware that what they are all about is pure drivel. Bengali art house cinema may be boring, but the alternative does not have to be this! I say allow on-screen kissing if it will spare us the lewd thrusting sequences!

Andrew does a disservice - the word "pandering" comes to mind - when he presents this silly movie as some sort of high mark of globalization. The movie has higher US box office receipts only because more of its target audience lives in the U.S. thanks to another canard - "high-skill" visa-holders (and their low-skill spouses) filling a worker shortage that does not necessarily exist.

The real tragedy is that this so-called globalization is debasing/destroying the true culture in the rush to wannabe "global".

Forget the hair and the abs - what's with the music?? The one redeeming point of Hindi movies used to be the music - and this is what we have come to! And Dard-e-Disco??!!! I mean, really - could we get any cheesier?

I don't understand the constant harping on Bengali art-house movies either. Mr. Leonard may be waking up to the globalization of pop-culture today - but Bollywood movies have been carrying on in this manner for a while now... And let's face it, Bollywood has won. Big time. Bengali art-house movies have not only lost - they really died with Ray. So, as gracious winners, Bollywood should really stop taking cheap potshots. Yes, there will be a few of us who will hold on to our old tapes. Yes, we actually do enjoy watching them and no, we do not expect Bollywood fans to understand why we do so. All we ask is to be left alone.

For all the Bollywood bashers, how many times have we heard it before? The same old high-browed put-downs: too much singing and dancing, there's no story, acting sucks, too melodramatic, no character build-up. As if all movies that come out of Hollywood are deep, life-affirming sagas.

The truth is that Bollywood is taking over the world because Bollywood movies fulfill a real need in NRIs, and NRPs (non-resident Indians and Pakistanis), even non-Asians, catering to a huge Asian diaspora, and they are popular in the Middle East, all of Europe and the U.S., and across the rest of the world. The theater I go to makes most of its revenue now via Bollywood films, not Tom Cruise's action flicks.

The fact of the matter is, these movies are truly Indian, deep down, and not just wrapped in "platitudes". I can go on and on about NRIs' home-sickness, the lack of nudity, Indian family values, the song-and-dance routines, but really, there's no one explanation for it. All you can say about it is, it's an art form in and of itself, and comparing it to Hollywood is like comparing apples to oranges, or futile.

And for everyone who thinks "true acting" or "real directing" can only be found in Hollywood, I suggest you watch any one of Deepa Mehta's Fire, Earth, or Water, Mani Ratnam's Bombay, Amir Khan's Lagaan, or SRK in Dilwale Dulhaniya Lejayenge, among a number of other excellent Bollywood flms.