New Statesman - The elephant in the foyer

Sunday (12A)
dir: Rohit Shetty

Taare Zameen Par: Every Child Is Special (PG)
dir: Aamir Khan

In commercial terms, Bollywood is the elephant in the foyer of every British cinema. How can it be that such a colossal, eye-catching beast is so easily overlooked by large portions of the press and public? It took the bullying of Shilpa Shetty on Celebrity Big Brother to even get the word "Bollywood" into the newspapers on a regular basis, but that same attitude is played out subtly on every level.

Bollywood is rarely acknowledged unless it impinges upon mainstream (that is to say, English-language) pop culture, as it does when international co-productions bring it on to the media radar. Sony Pictures recently co-funded Saawariya (an adaptation of Dostoevsky's short story "White Nights"), while this summer will bring the release of Roadside Romeo, a Hindi-language, computer-animated feature that marks the first collaboration between Walt Disney and Mumbai-based Yash Raj Films.

The possibility of a crossover hit that reaches non-Asian audiences is sometimes mentioned in reverential tones, as though Bollywood needs to overcome a barrier inhibiting its potential. This is poppycock. Bollywood films often outstrip British or American releases at the box office: Elizabeth: the Golden Age had its opening weekend takings in November of roughly £2,000 per screen eclipsed by the £10,000 average notched up by Om Shanti Om, despite the latter showing on a fraction of the screens. Of course, commercial success is no guarantee of quality: Namastey London was the third-highest-grossing Indian film of 2007, but I watched it on a plane and still ended up walking out.

Bollywood is still ignored, regardless of quality or success. Part of the problem is that the distributors have no incentive to appeal to a wider audience when their fan base is so loyal and lucrative. The pictures are rarely screened for critics, which is why I visited a London multiplex to see two current Bollywood hits, Sunday and Taare Zameen Par: Every Child Is Special.

Sunday is an overstuffed musical-comedy-thriller-romance that begins with the entire cast boogieing on a giant calendar and then gets really silly. Sehar (Ayesha Takia) blacks out in a club and awakes to find herself suspected of murder. Luckily, she is protected by Rajveer (Ajay Devgan), a corrupt cop who doesn't own a shirt that he won't wear open to the navel, and is never seen without an everlasting, non-drip Cornetto. The film switches at short notice between frantic Bourne-style chase sequences, speeded-up Benny Hill routines, social commentary and emphatic dance numbers. The only thing that spoils the fun is the discussion between Rajveer and his sidekick about whether God or parents are to "blame" for homosexuality.

Taare Zameen Par is more sophisticated, and also more sentimental. No one understands little Ishaan Awasthi (Darsheel Safary), who is a dab hand with a paintbrush but panics when faced with schoolbooks. Enter Aamir Khan (also the film's director) as the progressive art teacher Ram, a Peter Gabriel lookalike with a Hoxton fin, who can't stop tousling the hair of any child within reach. Ram diagnoses dyslexia and teaches Ishaan's parents to value their son; Khan pads out the film by giving himself lots of affectionate close-ups.

It's not exactly that I fell for all this schmaltz, more that I had something in my eye for the whole three hours. The early scenes, which employ animated inserts to express Ishaan's private world, are the most bewitching, though you have to admire any film in which the supposed climax is an entirely undramatic open-air art class. Safary, the child star, is so adorably goofy that I have since applied to adopt him. By contrast, Khan's charm offensive after the intermission looks a little desperate and competitive. Oh yes - the intermission. Now there's a Bollywood convention I could get used to. Just enough time to nip out for an everlasting Cornetto.