Like father like daughter: The Story of Pooja Bhatt

One thing I always liked about Pooja Bhatt (No..not her acting skills) was that she is unpretentious. She is what she is. She did not have the trappings of a star (oops...star daughter). She did not look perfect all the time, did not hide her relationships to maintain her "single" status in the public domain (seems like you have to do that to remain popular in the glam biz.. at least Hollywood bound Ms. Rai follows that mantra and she is not doing too badly for herself)

Coming back to Pooja Bhatt. So what if her career as an actress didn't really take off. So what if the Bhatt production house was the cradle and grave of her acting career. So what.. she always remained her own person and it is definitely a quality to be so, especially if you are stuck with the biggest phonies around! Hats off to her!

But she did not give up on films. After her unsuccessful stint as an actress and later, attracting attention for all the wrong reasons (Remember.. that controversial mag cover and her fight to give up on an abusive relationship or whatever), she made her foray into film direction under the guidance of her able father, Mr. Mahesh Bhatt. Independence is not something that the Bhatts believe in. As I said in one of my earlier posts, for the Bhatt camp, its all in the family!

So for the Bhatts or any of their relatives who are hanging around, just come together and make a movie. How do you think the Soni Razdans, Emran Hashmis and Mohit Suris of the world get their breaks? Man, I wish I had such a supportive family! According to Mahesh Bhatt, Hashmi is one of the best looking leading men today. I am not one for looks (I mean, I appreciate beauty and all but I also believe that one cannot help the way one looks so that's no factor when it comes to judging a person) but Emran Hashmi and handsome don't go together. I really do want to see better looking men on screen and Emran does not feature on my list!

Pooja Bhatt while promoting her debut fim as director, Jism which needless to say, follows the Bhatt tradition of plagiarism (It is a copy of the Nicole Kidman movie, "To Die For") says that the lead character is a woman of today who is not ashamed to express her sexuality. It apparently explores love and lust in a way never seen before on the Indian screen. If the new age woman is as manipulative and cold blooded as Bips's character was in the movie, then, bhagwan bachaye sabko!

But surprisingly, the movie was not as bad as I thought it would be. The music was great, the cinematography was brilliant and John Abraham was quite good actually. After watching Arjun Rampal in a few movies, I thought John would only prove that models can't act but I was in for a sweet surprise.

Recently, Pooja proved that she is one step ahead of her father. Not only is she verbose (she is yet to achieve the greatness of her father in that department but with age and experience, she will catch up) but she is extremely honest. On a television interview recently, she was asked as to what happened to originality of ideas and concepts in Hindi movies. She smartly replied that Bhai, humto seedha copy karte hain...ab utna talent to hum mein hain nahi ki inspired yah influenced ho sake yah phir kisi ko tribute dey sakey!

It takes a lot of courage to shed the tag of being inspired in Bollywood and most importantly, make a confession of this kind. Way to go girl, I am proud of you!

Forget the Kapoors and the Bachchans, the Bhatts are truly the most exciting film family in Bollywood, at least in my eyes!