Rocky Bolly-Boa

One of the free online features of today’s Wall Street Journal is a trailer for Bollywood’s version of the Rocky Balboa story. (Look carefully – that’s not Sylvester Stallone, that’s some Indian actor who looks remarkably like him) The Indian film industry is innovative and thriving – why did it have to stoop to this? It’s bad enough that “Rocky” sequels multiply like rabbits here in the States. Are we to assume that Bollywood is also cooking up a series of Rocky Bolly-boa sequels for Indian audiences? I’d almost rather watch Monsoon Wedding and Bride & Prejudice back-to-back than watch an unimaginative re-telling of the Rocky story yet again.

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UPDATE: There’s actually a companion piece to the video clip on the first page of today’s Wall Street Journal: “Indians in U.S. Find New Sideline: Bollywood Moguls.” The upshot is that this cheesy Rocky Bolly-boa movie was actually produced by Indian infomercial entrepreneurs from New Jersey. Throughout the movie, apparently, there are product placements for the “Ab King” exercise machine. The reviews of the movie have been terrible — the Times of India wrote that the movie “almost puts you to sleep with its insipid goulash.” The film lasted only three weeks in theaters.