Hitch vs. Partner

                Hollywood and Bollywood are the two largest film industries in the world.  On one side, Hollywood produces the most popular movies in the world, while Bollywood produces the largest quantity of movies of any national film industry.  If someone was to compare the two film industries at a glance, Hollywood and Bollywood would initially seem to be completely different, and they were until recent years.  Now, the Bollywood film audience has begun to like the same sort of story lines that are present in American films, which has lead to several pairs of movies which have the same theme, and often almost identical plots.   A good example of this is are Andy Tennant’s film, Hitch, and David Dhawan’s movie Partner.  The storylines of these movies are almost identical; however, Partner, the second one to be released, two years after Hitch came out in movie theaters, has many elements included in it, typical to Bollywood movies that would never be seen in American films.  This shows us that even though the themes of movies might have been affected by globalization, each film industry still has its uniqueness, such as the songs and dances in Bollywood movies.  Nationalism plays a very important role in movies.

                Partner is such a close copy of Hitch that they have almost identical plots.  The main character in both the movies plays the role of a “love doctor” or “Love Guru” who helps men who want to enter into a serious relationship with another woman but do not know how to approach her for whatever reason that may be.  The movies focus on this “love doctor” helping one particular man, who has his eyes on a woman who would basically be impossible to get, while in the process meeting and falling in love with another girl.  Everything goes well until the “love-doctor” is exposed at which point both the girls break up with the guys, at which point, the “love-doctor” makes things right for both of them by explaining himself by showing that he is doing this with completely good intentions.

Bollywood has many characteristics to its movies that make its films very unique to worldcinema.  One of the most important of these is that most of them have a “goofy” aspect to them through their slapstick humor “His brand of comedy is strictly slapstick, and pretty enjoyable at that.”  This is present in the beginning of Partner, where the movie is introduced with about five minutes worth of cartoons.  Salman Khan, the main character who plays the role of “Love Guru”, describes his young life and how he grew up to become this “Love Guru” through animated people.  Another instance where this occurs is when the “Love Guru’s” nephew whose around five years old builds a missile that is activated when he says “Go, Baby, Go”.   While their family in on their boat, the boy accidentally activated the missile, which chases around the “Love Guru” who is on jet skiing in the bay.  This scene, along with many others are so outrageously unrealistic that it just comes across as completely ridiculous as stated on a Hindi movie review site: “The film went from one absurd scene to the other. In the middle of these sprang, loud, boisterous song and dance numbers, which had no link whatsoever to what was going on in the film at the time.”  In Hollywood movies, the humor is rarely this goofy except in the spoofs which are made with that intention, but is rather sarcastic, subtle, ironic, or simply in the form of practical jokes.  For the most part the humor is simple and easy to follow, but not ridiculously obvious like Bollywood films : “The smiles aren’t forced, the jokes come easy, and the scenes between Smith and James and Smith and Mendes – even the ones that feel too set-up – work because Smith’s so charismatic you can’t help but smile and go along with it.” 

The second main difference is the different ways songs and dances in the case of Indian films are used in the Hollywood versus Bollywood.  Songs and dances are probably the one that would be the most prevalent among Hindi movies are the songs and dances.  Of course, Partner, is not an exception to this.  With several Hindi songs and the typical dance moves, even if all the characters in the movie were white, it would be obvious that this was an Indian movie.  This is the number one trait of Hindi movies, the one that distinguishes them from other national cinemas.  Furthermore, most of the songs deal with romance, where the main character who is usually a guy sings to or about the girl whom he is trying to impress.  In these scenes is where camera angles are important.  Not only are these dancing scenes characteristic of Bollywood movies, but so are the types of camera angles use in them.  Dutch angles are very prevalent throughout songs in all Bollywood movies.  On the other hand, Hollywood movies such as Hitch do have songs, but they are usually songs that are not sung by the characters in the movie, but used more as background music for events that occur throughout the movie.   There is no real trend in the music that is played in Hollywood movies, but is used to build up suspense, or to lighten up the mood of the movie.

The third trait of Bollywood movies that is prevalent in this movie, along with the majority of other Indian movies is the romance.  Of course, in this case, romance is the theme of the Hollywood movie as well, but this characteristic can be generalized to include all other movies as well; in fact it is close to impossible to find a Bollywood movie that does not include some sort of romantic experience in it.  If one was to analyze the romance in Bollywood further, they would also find that these romances also follow the same pattern; the guy falls in love with the girl at first glance, then works to get the girl to fall for him which of course she finally does, but the guy does something wrong and she leaves him, and he works even harder to win her back.  In the end, she eventually forgives him, and they live happily ever after.  This pattern is Bollywood’s trademark, and after watching, it is very obvious that this is the pattern of romance that Hitch uses between the two characters Hitch and Sara, and it almost seems as if Hollywood has copied this romance trend from Bollywood films even though Partner is the copy of Hitch and not vice-versa.

                Hitch and Partner, may follow the same themes, but after analyzing them, it is very apparent they have crucial differences that make them very different from each other.  These differences shows us the differences between the national film industries that created them.  The Indian audience and the American audiences have very different expectations and tastes in movies even though the Indian audience is beginning to very much appreciate Hollywood movies.  These taste difference are very prevalent in the movies, which is what makes these two movies unique even though they may be essentially the same.  This is the role of nationalism in movies.

Works Cited

Amodini. "Review: Partner." Amodini's Movie Reviews. 22 July 2007. 11 Mar. 2009 .

Kumar, Nikhil. "Partner: Movie Review." Apunkachoice. 20 July 2007. 12 Mar. 2009 .

Murray, Rebecca. ""Hitch" Movie Review." About.com: Hollywood Movies. 2005. 11 Mar. 2009 m