Bollywood films are ruining the Imdb top 250

For the last couple of years, the top 250 has seen ever more Asian and Bollywood films entering the list. At the risk of being branded that tediously ubiquitous word that begins with “R” and ends with “ist”, I'll say my piece. Because I think this Asian invasion is a very, very bad thing for Imdb.

Some of the films being elevated to lofty positions are PK (2014), Gangs Of Wasseypur (2012), Lagaan: Once Upon A Time In India (2011), Dil Chahta Hai (2001), Rang De Basanti (2006), A Wednesday (2008) 3 Idiots (2009), Like Stars On Earth (2007) and The Bandit (2006).

Cut to the chase: these films are poor. At first I watched a couple of them, thinking that it was good and right to expand my cultural knowledge. I'd never heard of these films before – perhaps they WERE classics that had been ignored by the Western media. Sadly, no: Three Idiots is a broad, hellishly overlong comedy (most Bollywood films seem to be of absurd length) with sickly sentiment and a weird mix of the juvenile and the serious (there are a few bright song and dance numbers though); Like Stars On Earth is a syrupy, sickly drama, hopelessly unsubtle and – of course - hellishly overlong (again, with a few bright moments).

These films do not stand up to objective analysis. This is hypothetical, but if they were made by Hollywood they would not get favourable critical notices or sell many tickets. A delve into what Imdb deigns to tell us about voters reveals that on the films listed above, ALL have a very low score from “Top 1000 voters”, ie voters who regularly vote on the Imdb's best films. We can conclude from this that people who actually know about films and have decent taste are giving these Bollywood films very low scores. But they are washed away by a tsunami of less critically astute viewers on the site.

Democracy can suck sometimes, huh? But I wouldn't even call this “democracy”, because there is no demos, ie the common populace of a democracy as a unit. Just as sovereignty cannot be pooled, democracy cannot be extended to very different common populaces and be expected to function in the same way. Those steeped in Hollywood tend not to be steeped in Bollywood.

Every week now, it seems, the top 250, once a reasonably reliable measure of quality, is being contaminated by more of these movies. This is partly because when films cross the 25,000-vote mark they become eligible for the top 250. Why is this happening? My guess would be that there are now more and more English speakers who have a cultural affinity with Eastern culture. Europe has more Asian people within its limits than ever before; more Asians in their home countries speak English, and then they go on websites like Imdb.

I can only see the situation getting worse. And I don't see any easy way to fix it – a few more years from now who's to say that around half of the top 250 won't consist of Asian films? Possible solutions will likely be beyond the pale of what is considered acceptable at a big, consumer-friendly website like Imdb. In this woebegone age of cultural relativity it will be said that to act against these films and their fans, and, say, give them their own, separate list would be tantamount to cultural apartheid and even promote the idea that the white person's ideas are superior to the non-white person's ideas.

Something has to be done, though, or the top 250 will slide into irrelevance, slain by political correctness (as much else that is good has been). By all means allow everyone to keep voting for films they like, but don't have one list purporting to be the “ultimate” list when it is really a miserable melting pot that pleases nobody, an apologetic rota designed to pretend that we all think the same way and want to think the same way.

And don't say something like “but it's their culture, you don't understand” or dish out any of that “white imperialism” garbage, because that's exactly what it is, garbage. Do that and you're stepping behind the wannabe impregnable defensive shield of political correctness given to you by people who hate their history and culture; you're indulging in the last refuge of a scoundrel.

While, say, Indian cuisine or Japanese architecture can be said to have high worth in their respective fields, Bollywood films do not have high worth in cinema. Not a single one has ever come close to getting within a sniff of an Academy Award for instance. Roger Ebert or Leonard Maltin or Leslie Halliwell or Pauline Kael didn't laud any of them. Why would great film writers write about great films from around the world, from Russia, from Italy, from France, from Japan, and NOT talk about Bollywood films? Answer: because they're rubbish! They're not worth mentioning. It has nothing to do with prejudice, it's to do with sober critical assessment, and those rating Bollywood films 10/10 do not have these critical faculties.

As a film-lover I consider it a minor tragedy that this is happening to the top 250. It's no longer a proper list of great films. Truly excellent films are being pushed out of the list because of these low quality interlopers that happen to have a small band of vociferous supporters who probably haven't ever even seen a Hitchcock, a Kubrick, an Allen or perhaps even a Satyajit Ray.

I'm aware that the top 250 will never be a 100% reliable guide to what to watch, and that its voting system is sometimes caught up in a tangled web of vicious, petty geekery, but its value is being massively eroded further by what is now happening, and that's a crying shame.