I think that a lot of really good stuff has come out of Bollywood, but we are exposed to so little of it that mp3smart's impression is pretty common. I mean, there are a lot of "typical Bollywood" films out there, but there are also some genuine gems from there as well.
I have seen a few REALLY good movies (can't recall names currently) and I've started a few bad ones too. I have a few one my "must see list" including Black and Satya. I also heard an interview on NPR with someone several years ago regarding a movie that was about a young American Indian who returned to India and essentially confronted his father's religion head on, a new thing to him, and in the process discovered a lot about himself and his father. I THINK it might be M. Night's "Praying with Anger" but it seems odd that NPR would be profiling this early movie after The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable came out. The plot sort of matches up to my memory, but not quite, so I'm not 100% sure that it's the movie I actually heard about, and I cannot find any references on NPRs website. Whatever it was, it sounded like a GREAT movie (and "Praying with Anger" is only so-so according to many websites).
Thanks for the suggestion John, I've added this movie to my Netflix's queue.