Our mainstream Bollywood films don’t have regular conversations – they have 'dialogue-baazi'. Things are said for dramatic effect; for the audience to go ‘Wah Wah!’ which is why Shyam Benegal would refer to them as such. Not only are many of these dialogues over the top, but some are also just plain senseless and many reflect the regressive mindsets of their times:
For a minute let’s take our minds off how Salman Khan looks like an emaciated sparrow here and think back to the line - Dosti ka ek rule hai. No sorry. No thank you. Huh! So we're supposed to be complete unfeeling pricks with friends? Aren't we supposed to love our friends?
This whole movie was OTT so why not the dialogues. So when Akshay Kumar says Joh main bolta hoon woh main karta hoon...joh main nahi bolta woh main definitely karta hoon this is obviously just for effect. But what does it mean? Is this a confession or admission of unpredictability?
This Himesh Reshammiya movie apparently had this line - Tere shareer mein itna khoon nahi hoga...jitna Ravi Kumar ek baar mein moot deta hai. What? Just…WTF? I want what that dialogue writer was smoking when they wrote those words in that particular sequence.
It’s my way, or sky way goes one line. Pasand Aaya toh dil me warna dimag me bhi nhi goes another line spoken by the too-cool-by-half Ajay Devgn right after he slaps the ‘vamp’ and causes her to fall into the pool. This is awful at so many levels --- not just silly.
The character of Sanjay Dutt in the film Desi Boys was heard to say Uske liye degree nahi pedegree chaiye. Kuchh bhi! Write a line simply because it rhymes and sense be damned? Basically, the character is saying that education is irrelevant, and 'breeding' is everything? Are we speaking about humans or Labrador Reteivers?
This is Salman Khan in the movie Ready, removing his shirt in the middle of what appears to be a party. Regardless of the number of times his shirt has inexplicably come off in numerous movies, it is some of the lines he has spoken in his movies that really take the biscuit. In the same movie he says Zindagi mein teen cheezen kabhi underestimate mat karna - I, me and myself and also Mein usme se hu joh machli ko duba kar marr sakta hu.
In Hindi movies, a woman being sexually assaulted bizarrely means she has ‘lost her honour’. So she apologises for having violence done unto her. Right after being raped, she will be made to say something like, Main kis ko muh dikhane ke kabil nahi rahi – why? Or mein tumhare kabil nahi rahi Mohan – again why??
Earlier it used to be doves billing and flowers kissing to show that there is action happening off screen. Now they show feet entwining or hands clutching each other from below the bedcovers. And the euphemisms for sex – chalo ek ho jayen hum, sambhog, sharirik sambandh…. That list is a long one too.
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