Indian cinema, particularly Bollywood cinema has a (bad) reputation as colourful musical extravaganzas that have no resemblance whatsoever to anything remotely real. It is no surprise then that a lot of people from outside India cannot really get into it. I am not a big fan of Bollywood school of cinema myself but I understand where it is coming from.
Basically, there are two schools of thought about film-making. One philosophy is that cinema should portray reality. The film acts as a window into the lives of people that we relate to at some level. Granted that nothing important or interesting ever happens in most of our lives but the characters in the realist film are archetypes of people we know or of ourselves, slightly exaggerated or dramatised. So one can handle topics such as ennui, existential despair, love (in its stripped down unromantic version), dilemmas about life, the universe and everything. So one could watch a movie, go home and think what would I have done if I was the guy in the Nazi camp or the girl with terminal cancer. What insight do I get about how to lead my life from the trials and tribulations of the life of others shown in the big screen?
But this philosophy is completely shunned by the second group. For them, cinema is about escape. It is about wish fulfillment. People don't want to spend good money to watch a movie about poverty and despair. They have enough of it in real life. They don't want existential angst. They want catharsis. Simple themes. Good vs. evil. Triumph against odds. Superheroes. Miracles. Disasters. Gooey love. Dance. Music. Popcorn.
IMO, the more difficult 'real' life is, the more one is interested in escapists fantasies more than anything else.
On the other hand, my problem with Bollywood (and I use the term loosely) is not that they make escapist capers, it is that they make really bad escapist capers.
