Cheetah girls

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Udaipur’s palaces have been gaining increasing traction in the Western media, whether it is via Madonna’s extended vacation there or Elizabeth Hurley’s grand wedding spectacle. Add on the growing Bollywood buzz, which has recently helped bring the likes of Sly Stallone and Snoop Dog aboard Indian productions, and it’s a no-brainer why Disney selected this city of lakes as the backdrop for its new teen movie The Cheetah Girls: One World, which debuted this Friday at primetime in the US.

Only the media giant’s great confidence in the ‘Bollywood formula meets western pop and hip-hop’ explains why it dared to pit this release against the final weekend of the Olympics. In general, Disney Channel has found high school musicals to be big buck earners. And One World song promos went viral soon after their release in June.

The first of the Cheetah Girls movies featuring a bubbly four-girls band first aired on Disney back in 2003. Not only was that movie a hit, its soundtrack went platinum and a concert tour raked in $25 million. The second installment was set in Spain, and was also successful. As for the girls’ message, it is best captured in their Cinderella song: “I can slay my own dragons. I can dream my own dreams. My knight in shining armor is me. So I'm gonna set me free.” Girly, but with a twist at that.

The rest of TV, where most of the male actors nominated for Emmys this year were of Anglo-Saxon descent, generally cuts a sorry figure against Cheetah Girl’s multi-ethnic cast and global wanderings. The third edition of course features Indian actors like old-timer Roshan Seth and newbies like Deepti Daryanani prominently. A Disney executive has joked about the series’ commitment to diversity: “I think we’re going to Antarctica for the fourth one!”

And what were the Cheetah girls’ experiences while shooting in India? Like the classic tourist, they have made much of climbing on top of an elephant, a “super, super big” one. One of them has complained that they were trying to wave and look pretty and lip sync all at the same time when they were hauled up for messing up their lyrics. Her response: “Yes, well, we're trying to concentrate and not DIE.” Well, welcome to Bollywood.