Film Reviews are no more an analytical criticism of the Contents but a hype for the product

Film Reviews are no more an analytical criticism of the Contents but a hype for the product In the present state of Bollywood when the success of a film is only gauged in terms of Box Office; no wonder almost all Media, whether Print or electronic; take services of mere REVIEWERS and not Media Critics. No brownie points to have courage of conviction to say that in a few instances, a ‘Readymade’ review with graded stars is simply handed over by the Producer’s PR machinery written under a pseudo name. Half baked criticism or no criticism but only accolades, creating marketing hoopla is paid for. And to attract more eye balls and generate curiosity to view a film becomes the “IN FACTOR” which is achieved by Grading a film from poor to outstanding on a scale of ‘half stars to full 5 stars’. And that becomes a readymade “Catch line” for publicising the film. Thus the awarding of stars to a review of a film, irrespective of non-sensical “Content”, is the name of the game.

A conscientious and learned film critic may write many negative points in the review which will remain uncut for the right of freedom of expression of the reviewer, but to grant the stars to a review is almost a sole prerogative of the Media Marketing hands. One may call it even manipulation but then it has a price. No wonder, therefore, that today a Bollywood film with big star names has to allocate budget for publicity and marketing (includes cost of paid news and publicity on popular channel shows or widely circulated print media) equal to the production cost of an extravaganza.

Shri Sandeep Khurana had undertaken the task data compilation and research on the Bollywood Film Reviewers of India and the findings were pretty interesting provoking a heated but logical debate of crispy exchanges. This was published by the citizen friendly media mag “Moneylife”. Click the following link to get an interesting account on the subject.

http://www.moneylife.in/article/bollywood-box-office-unplugged-iii-movie...