There’s a dangerous idea doing the rounds. Like many dangerous ideas, it comes from abroad. And what it amounts to, essentially, is this: “Bollywood is cool.” To say that the contention has become widespread would be an understatement akin to Nick Clegg’s leadership of the Lib Dems. Bollywood films now regularly make the UK Top Ten. Bollywood gossip is carried in some British newspapers. The ever-extending influence of the genre is evident in Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge!, in Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, and in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bombay Dreams.

I’ve just watched an online Bollywood-themed Michael Jackson Thriller tribute. The other week an episode of Hotel Babylon ended with the cast embarking on an elaborate and entirely unnecessary Bollywood dance routine. Typing “Bollywood-themed” into a newspaper database informs us that in recent months Bollywood has variously inspired: a circus show in LA, a charity ball in Coventry, a 40th birthday party in New Zealand, a Snoop Dogg track, a dance routine on Britney Spears’s tour, a team’s response to a task on The Apprentice, and an episode of The Wonder Pets! on Nickelodeon.

I realise that for some Indians this is a source of pride: an indicator that the sub-continent now has both economic and cultural clout on the global stage. But personally I find it depressing that a country that has produced so much important music, literature and philosophy has become synonymous with its most moronic cultural phenomenon.

In what ways are Bollywood movies moronic? Well, leaving aside the lipsynching (the actors rarely do their own singing), the plagiarism (writers habitually copy tunes and plots from other films), the nepotism (relatives of Bollywood stars often get given choice roles), the crap sound (it is rarely recorded on location), the crap writing (dialogue and lyric) and that Bollywood movies are as predictable as a can of Coke, with their mindless use of love triangles, moustachioed villains and star-crossed lovers dancing around trees, I have two main problems, the first of which is the ceaselessly melodramatic plotting.

Here, for instance, is a storyline summary of Arundhati, a fairly typically hysterical Bollywood movie, as cited on Chakpak, a Bollywood website: “The story begins with Jejamma, who ruled the Gadwal area many years ago and true to her title, she is brave, kind and very warm to her people. However, there is evil in her home in the form of her own brother-in-law who is a major womaniser and does not even hesitate to sleep with women in front of his wife. Unable to bear the torture and humiliation, Jejamma’s sister commits suicide and enraged by his wrongdoings, Jejamma gets him beaten to death and leaves him in the jungle.

“However, the revenge element in him keeps the spirit awake and he is rescued by the Agora sadhus. There, he learns all the black magic and becomes a powerful dark lord. He comes back to take revenge on Jejamma by having her physically but then she succeeds in trapping him and buries him alive, she builds a divine wall using amulets and yantras.

“Times change and the present day comes with Arundhati being considered the reincarnation of Jejamma. She is due to get married but then the evil sorcerer begins to use his charms and spells to break free from the live burial . . .”

There is more. But life is short and space is limited and this brings me to my second issue with Bollywood: the ridiculous length of the films. As a child I grew to dread the evenings when relatives mentioned the possibility of renting a video, as it would mean at least three hours of being ignored, not eating and not being allowed to watch Supergran. There is absolutely no need for anything, apart from sleep, to go on longer than two hours. And yet Bollywood movies routinely do so.

Of course, Indian cinema wasn’t always this rubbish. In 1957, both Mehboob Khan’s Mother India, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and V Shantaram’s Do Aankhen Barah Haath, which is said to have inspired The Dirty Dozen, were released. Indian movies regularly competed for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in the Fifties and Sixties. But it all went wrong in the Seventies, and since then, with a few exceptions, Bollywood has routinely been producing vacuous escapist dross for the masses.

It has been said that at this point Indian producers went from making films about poor people for rich people, to making films about rich people for poor people. And I can, with effort, see the escapist appeal of attractive people singing and dancing in meadows, with their midriffs exposed. But I don’t think that this nonsense should be promoted and celebrated. Imagine how people in the UK would react if Mr Bean suddenly became a byword for British culture across the globe.

Bollywood fans, including members of my family, are constantly telling me that the films have improved, but I can see no sign of this. I watched Border, a blockbuster based on the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, when I was in India a few years ago and have had more enjoyable operations. A few years later I bought a DVD of Lagaan, encouraged by rave reviews, and found it about as engaging as a set of washing instructions on a cardigan.

And last week, in an attempt to be balanced, I sat through the “superhit” historical film Jodhaa Akbar, which recently won six awards at the International Indian Film Academy awards. Alarm bells started ringing when it transpired that the DVD case contained no fewer than three DVDs (film length: 209 minutes). They became louder when I read a New York Times review describing the movie as “a pure product of Bollywood in all its starry, song-and-dance glory”.

Sure enough, it was your standard Bollywood gimpery. Character development worthy of an episode of The Gummy Bears. The subtext of a road sign. Actors who’d struggle to convey the notion of “pain” if you stabbed them in the kidneys. Nothing to be proud of.

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