Review Central

Most Indian film fanatics had two websites,IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes,to turn to in order to read up on Hollywood films. But there wasn’t many options for Hindi films. Both Review Gang and Review Schview set out to fill this gap. Chennai-based Manu Janardhanan,who set up Review Gang,says,“I looked around the Indian blogosphere and could not find a single website that collated reviews or provided decent synopses of movies. I’m a huge fan of IMDb and this website is an attempt to do something similar.”

Review Schview is the more basic of the two sites,with a simple layout and easy to use interface. The new releases are given their respective average ratings (based on the critical rating),with links to each individual critical review,and some basic information). Creator,S M Hussain explains,“At the moment I am just trying to do one thing and do it well. But user reviews are surely an option in the future.”

Review Gang,however,goes the whole hog with critic ratings,viewer ratings,synopses,trailers,posters and now,even music. One of the more interesting features of Review Gang is the Critic vs Critic graph,where one can pitch upto three movie critics against each other and compare their ratings. The reviews on both sites though,are limited to Hindi films. Regional films might find a place on them in the future,provided there are reliable contributors,stress both Janardhanan and Hussain.

There’s no doubt that both sites have gained steadily in popularity; even though they were started less than five months back,both get a few hundred hits every day. However,neither makes money at the moment. Hussain says that he might monetise the site if it does well. Janardhanan,however,has slightly more ambitious plans. “I currently rely entirely on volunteers,but I think it’s a good place to link up with distributors. They find an online platform,while the site will be able to make some money.”