Why I actually liked Ra.ONE

Since the very release, Ra.ONE was getting extremely poor reviews among my friends. Multiple jokes were floating around in Facebook on SRK, Ra.ONE and the over enthusiastic promotions of the movie. I remember a classy one in which SRK is ready to do the dishes of a family if they agrees to watch Ra.ONE.

Yet I happened to be inside a multiplex to catch a noon show of Ra.ONE. I was not really expecting much out of the movie given the reviews I read. I went to the theater mainly because there were no alternatives. Watching Ra.ONE still seemed better than Himesh Reshammiya's latest Damadamm! or Hema Malini's Tell Me O Kkhuda (even with God being reinforced with a double K).

We opted for the 3D version of the film. The movie started with a good title sequence that made it clear that the 3D qualiy was not bad. Although as the movie progressed, most of the scenes in the movie looked 2D to me. :-/

Then the movie started. The opening scene was hilarious. First I thought this is the same SRK stupidity. But then I had a second thought and realized that scenes like this will set this film apart from a regular Hollywood style action film. I mean, if you want to watch a serious action movie go watch an English movie. This movie is an action film dipped in typical bollywood achaar. Like every other bollywood movie, it has songs, dance and melodrama. This makes the movie so Indian; so bollywood.

This movie is supposed to be a science fiction. The fiction part is typical bollywood melodrama. But I have no problems with it as I liked the way the movie did not try to follow Hollywood action movies. But about the science part, I have only one adjective: STUPID (with bold, capital and underline). The whole idea of blending of digital and real world seemed bogus. You do expect the sci-fi flicks a little bit less stupid. Like what logic can you give when a software bot uses mobile phone signals to bring a plastic statue to life? And then the plastic statues become the villain and the hero of the movie. What does the director think about his audience? Grass eating creatures?

Let me tell you the plot of the movie in brief here. The movie starts with Prateek, a video game addicted teenager who is inside a hilarious video game dream. Prateek's father is Shekhar who is himself a video game developer. Shekhar looks like kind of stupid yet noble fellow. (Like all movies, stupids are always noble). He is portrayed as a typical South Indian who eats noodles with white coconut chutney. Well, this is different. I was really bored seeing the same Punjabi and Bengali stereotypes in bollywood films. This film brings the South Indian. For a change.

Shekhar's recent project is on a new video game called Ra.ONE (pronounced as Raavan), named after the name of it's villain. The hero is G.ONE which is NOT pronouced as g-o-n-e gone. Did the film makers never think about what 'gone' means in English? I don't know. Whatever, G.ONE is pronounced as jeevan meaning life. 

On the day of the game launch, the highly advanced AI of Ra.ONE starts to think on it's own and becomes conscious. When Prateek engages in a game against him, he vows to take revenge and then I don't know how, Ra.ONE comes out of the computer to a statue. Then it engages in a killing spree and even kills Shekhar. It then looks out for Prateek who plays under the screen name of Lucifer. And about time, Jenny, an employee at Shekhar's company, brings the G.ONE statue to life. Then a series of fights. Typical bollywood style belly scratching comedy, some melodramatic glycerin extracts and the final fight. That's all in it.

Then why did I like this film? Mainly because it resisted the urge to be like a Hollywood style action film and became a bollywood one. Jist don't categorize it as a science fiction or an action movie. Expect something in the line of Main Hoon Naa or Om Shanti Om and you will not be disappointed.

Fashion - Movie Review

Another Madhur Bhandarkar movie. But i have to say Madhur has started to develop his own cliches. Like the same bunch of gay people in all movies and so on... And in Fashion it crossed limits yaar! Like every odd person is a GAY!!!!

The main problem with Fashion is that it's too much predictable. Like when Meghna gets too overconfident and arrogant over her quick success, we start worrying that she must fall quick and murmur some common sayings like "Pride goes fall" and all that.
And that happens too...
Like when Abhijit Sarin, the Panace boss contracts Meghna as the new 'Face' being seemingly unfair to previous face Shonali, we all think that there must be some underlying sexual contracts also being signed. We all can predict what is going to happen next. Like my friend said, there is no twists.

The film stands on some really powerful performances by specially Kangna Ranaut and Priyanka Chopra. Kangna really acted awesome. Among others, Kitu Kidwani and Mugdha Godse are notable.

But hey!!! Someone please do something with the bunch of gay people flocking around the whole movie.

Image courtesy: Wikipedia

Hello vs One Night @ Call Center

It's sad to see how bollywood masala flicks make a mess out of a decent novel. When i read One Night @ Call Center by Chetan Bhagat, it was really unputdownable. The way the story unfolds, the light in which relationships are shown, the catchy young easy flowing language, the sharp sense of humour, the novel was really awesome. Even the really long portion where God gives you some useful gyaan, it seems more like your best friend talking than some father of some church or some monks.

But what we see in the movie?

Although i have seen really a small portion of the film (from where Vroom throws stone at the Cola hoarding to the end), the rotten smell of a bad film comes out from every possible scene. The screenplay is childish, the dialogs are rotten, the sharp humor is just replaced by poor wannabe jokes, and everybody acts so stupid that the story itself is destroyed. Great dialogs and scenes are totally wiped out. The act of rescuing themselves with the help of dupattas have been replaced, the bike stunt at the end is completely removed even the fantastic stuff with MS Word was also wiped away. Probably the filmmakers thought all of us are more like buffoons like Bakshi.

Although I have missed almost all the songs of the film, but as i have listened to the album, i can assure you that they are equally bad. And just imagine the scene where Chetan Bhagat the author and God herself dancing in an ITEM NUMBER!!!! OMG!!!!!!

In summery the movie was PAINFUL and complete injustice... well in fact, CHEATING to all the people like me who loved the novel One Night @ Call Center by Chetan Bhagat and had a lot of expectation.

The time is really bad for me. Nothing is working out as planned. ;)

Image courtesy: Wikipedia

Taare Zameen Par

“Art is nothing but the expression of your emotion” said Ram Shankar Nikumbh. And from the very beginning we are told to suppress our emotions and do our work. Don’t do what you like to do. Just do what is more fruitful. From the very childhood, we all are puzzled inside a rat race. A never ending competition… where only the first one wins. A kind of maze… parents, relatives, teacher show us the way in. but they themselves don’t know the way out. We all are told to follow a simple rule: study-exam-study-exam and perhaps no learning. “Everybody wants numero uno in their home. And at the end of the game you should be either a doctor or an engineer or else in management.” The core of the story is simple… you should do whatever it takes to be a money earning machine. You should do something that pays you buck. What you are doing is not important. What is important is how much it pays back.

And this game starts right from the childhood. We are told to suppress all those abilities just because the deciders think that they are not that much fruitful. And as we grow up, this idea is well inside our brain. We become a robot who does only those things which it is supposed to do. Other things are simply wastage of time. And when we ourselves become parents we do whatever it takes to enroll the names of our children in this same never ending rat race in which we, ourselves are running, running and running.

This is not a review kind of thing of TZP. But I would like to share the story in a very short way (rather copy pasted it from Wikipedia):

Ishaan Awasthi is an eight-year-old whose world is filled with wonders that no one else seems to appreciate; colours, fish, dogs and kites are just not important in the world of adults, who are much more interested in things like homework, marks and neatness. And Ishaan just cannot seem to get anything right in class.

When he gets into far more trouble than his parents can handle, he is packed off to a boarding school to ‘be disciplined’. Things are no different at his new school, and Ishaan has to contend with the added trauma of separation from his family.

One day a new art teacher bursts onto the scene, Ram Shankar Nikumbh, who infects the students with joy and optimism. He breaks all the rules of ‘how things are done’ by asking them to think, dream and imagine, and all the children respond with enthusiasm, all except Ishaan. Nikumbh soon realizes that Ishaan is very unhappy, and he sets out to discover why. He meets his parents and comes to know about Ishaan's problems of dyslexia and his wonderful world of imagination. He sets out to help Ishaan at any cost. Finally his dream comes true when Ishaan stands out as an Art Scholar and also passes out his annual exams in school. At last Ishaan thanks his teacher Ram for helping him out to create his own world.

We all suffer from more or less the same trouble in the childhood. We can not do as our heart says. Many of us liked drawing, singing or other stuffs. But they have been forced to suppress them to carry on works. And these things don’t stop when we grow up. The difference is when we are young we can fight with teachers or parents to pursue our own liking. But when we grow up, we can not fight anymore because in that case we have to fight with ourselves. We have become a robot who only works and earns and flagellates whenever he doesn’t seem to be working.

Taare Zameen Par is one film that not only entertains you but enlightens you.