Be it music, plots, character names or movie posters, Bollywood has often been accused of lifting elements from the West. While some prefer to call it an inspiration, others look at it as blatant plagiarism. The most recent example involves Udta Punjab allegedly based on High Society, a 2002 novel by Ben Elton.
Two years after Diane Lane and Olivier Martinez created waves with their intimate scenes in the romantic thriller Unfaithful (2002), actors Emraan Hashmi and Mallika Sherawat created a similar furore in Murder. The Bollywood film which released in 2004 was lifted from the popular Hollywood film, which talks about extra marital affairs.
Starring Kamal Hassan, the comedy film Chachi 420 (1997) was inspired from Mrs Doubtfire (1993) starring Robin Williams. Although there are many differences in the plot, the film broadly revolves around similar premise to the Hollywood counterpart, where a father cross dresses as a housemaid to remain close to his kids.
Even though director Rohit Dhawan of God Tussi Great Ho (2008) maintained the film was inspired from a folktale about a Brahmin boy, but, critics and reviewers found the Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra starrer similar to the 2003 comedy, Bruce Almighty starring Jim Carrey and Jennifer Aniston.
Seven years after Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage saved the city of San Francisco from a deadly chemical attack in the film The Rock (1996), Bollywood lifted the plot and showed Ajay Devgn and Aashish Chaudhary saving Mumbai from similar attacks by Arbaaz Khan and Sanjay Kapoor in Qayamat (2003).
After Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan raised the question about whether a man and woman can be just friends in the 1989 film, Saif Ali Khan and Rani Mukherji debated the same thing for Indian viewers in Kunal Kohli directorial in 2001.
Taking a clue from Kevin Spacey starrer (1995) in how to mislead a policeman about a robbery, Irrfan Khan pulled off a similar thing in Chocolate (2005), when he misled his lawyer Anil Kapoor about a robbery that he claimed he never did.
The 2004 film showed Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx engaged in a high tension battle as Jamie Foxx - the cab driver tried to get away from Tom Cruise the assassin, who was on his mission. Few years later in 2006, Emraan Hashmi witnessed a similar thing, when the assassin Irrfan sat in his car and ordered him to take to the spot where he was about to commit his next murder.
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