Utt Pataang (2011) and A Stranger of Mine (2006) (Japanese)

The trend of interesting concept based films made in a limited budget with an out of the routine mindset is no doubt a welcome change in Bollywood. But a limited budget doesn’t mean that you don’t have to spend anything on the script or story-writing and have a liberty to copy or lift another creative person’s work simply frame to frame. A revelation of such kind undoubtedly makes you feel awkward when you come to know that the film which you really felt like praising was completely copied and a kind of shameless DVD replica in a different language with some new actors.

A few years back, the HIT small budget surprise package “Bheja Fry” gave me this similar kind of feeling when later on I found that it was a pure rip off from the French Film “The Dinner Game” with even the lead actors chosen keeping the original cast in mind. And this week, I again felt the same when a friendly reader at BTC informed me about the copied status of the recently released “UTT PATAANG” surprisingly again featuring Vinay Pathak in the lead.

So the truth is that Srikanth Velagaleti directed and Saurabh Shukla written film “UTT PATAANG” is a scene to scene copy of a Japanese movies titled “UNMEI JANAI HITO” or “A STRANGER OF MINE” released in 2005. But as I always hesitate writing about any such act before actually seeing the film, so I searched about this unknown film (may be in our part of the world) ove the net and found it right there on Youtube.

And after watching it I simply thought that - Do they actually keep the DVD players and a separate monitor running the Original Film at the shooting spots too? And Do they really keep referring to the shots taken in the actual movie and then go on to shoot their own version exactly in the similar manner? Whatever may be the case but truly speaking it was really awful to see the Japanese movie progressing exactly in the similar manner as seen in UTT PATAANG or rather I should say the other way round.

May be many of the viewers don’t really care whether its a copied work or not but for me its really tough to praise an (supposed to be) original painting which is a replica of its original masterpiece lying in a different part of the world, painted by a different person altogether.

Chek out at : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0461857/

(Thanks to ‘Chandan’ for this valuable info given in his comment)