Cinema Cinema

Subtitled That's Entertainment - Indian Style, this is basically a compilation film, substituting Indian epics for MGM musicals. As such, despite the coy introductory comments by well-fed stars, the uncertain grasp of film history, and the interchangeability of most of the extracts, it is not without interest as a helping of 'Madras Curry' (the staple Bombay diet of lavish melodramas packed to inordinate length with interminable songs, dances and comic interludes). Unfortunately it also has semi-sociological pretensions, and assembles a dismal collection of stereotypes (supposedly watching the extracts in a sleazy cinema) in an attempt to demonstrate the screen/audience relationship. Their reactions are, quite literally, the pits.