From the time that the credits roll on to the screen (Thanks to Shahenshah Amitabh, Superstar Rajnikanth and hugs to Sanjay Dutt & Priyanka Chopra), one gets the feeling that the movie is an indulgence in the exercise of 'I scratch your back and you scratch mine' and not the self proclaimed revolution in Hindi film making.
It is a confused mishmash of the same formulae that have been used in the Hindi film industry for all these years with some early 90s style Hollywood special effects thrown in. Somebody needs to tell the director Anubhav Sinha and the producer/actor Shah Rukh Khan that one cannot and should not try to please all the people in the audience, else the end result is exactly what they served: a movie that feels forced and stale
Story: By now, all who are remotely interested in this movie know about the story. It is the weakest link in the entire setup. The entire writer's union (even SRK has been credited with contributing to something that amounts to nothing) couldn't decide whether this needs to be a sci-fi, superhero, romance, children or an action flick. Some of the outstanding moments (scenes where I nearly stood outside the theater)are:
1. A press conference at the start where the audience is dumb as it believes the crap that Ms. Reddy dishes out about technology
2. The moment when the antagonist steps out of the game - no explanation on how the game developed an intelligence on its own or how it could move into the physical world in a suit that obviously does not have even a millionth of the processing power or storage capacity needed for such a complicated being to function
3. The superhero's entry - again, no idea how it came into being in the physical world. And how the hell did Ms. Reddy (who seems more like a marketing executive) figure out what the lead game designer / team leader SRK could not
4. How was Kareena able to keep her husband's death a secret from the neighbours in India? These days when even a burp is reported on the Facebook and/or Tweeted around the world, it seems highly unlikely
5. Why the hell did the robot have to run along the side of the train when running on the top would have been the fastest way to the motorman's cabin?
Frankly, the entire story leaves a lot to be desired
Influences: 1. Poster inspired from Batman Begins 2. The story inspired from Judgement Day (robot saves mother and son from another robot), The Last Action Hero (characters from imaginary world stepping out into the real world), Tron (gaming world characters vs real world characters), Kalicharan (father dies, someone replaces him to protect family), Iron Man (the concept of H.A.R.T. is the same as the arc reactor), Millennium Man (a robot learning about emotions) 3. Scenes inspired from Spiderman series, Batman series, Terminator series, Iron Man series, Rajni's Robot, whew 4. The best moment in the film for me was when the film's shooting was at the factory featured on Pink Floyd's Animals'cover. The only issue is it didn't look half as beautiful
Acting: the less said the better
Overall: Watch at your own risk
SRK may have recovered his investment but he has to remember that he may fool some of the people all the time, all the people some of the time, but he can't fool all the people all the time with his over-the-top marketing gimmicks
P.S. the much vaunted Rajnikanth special appearance seems like its airbrushed on to the reel
It is a confused mishmash of the same formulae that have been used in the Hindi film industry for all these years with some early 90s style Hollywood special effects thrown in. Somebody needs to tell the director Anubhav Sinha and the producer/actor Shah Rukh Khan that one cannot and should not try to please all the people in the audience, else the end result is exactly what they served: a movie that feels forced and stale
Story: By now, all who are remotely interested in this movie know about the story. It is the weakest link in the entire setup. The entire writer's union (even SRK has been credited with contributing to something that amounts to nothing) couldn't decide whether this needs to be a sci-fi, superhero, romance, children or an action flick. Some of the outstanding moments (scenes where I nearly stood outside the theater)are:
1. A press conference at the start where the audience is dumb as it believes the crap that Ms. Reddy dishes out about technology
2. The moment when the antagonist steps out of the game - no explanation on how the game developed an intelligence on its own or how it could move into the physical world in a suit that obviously does not have even a millionth of the processing power or storage capacity needed for such a complicated being to function
3. The superhero's entry - again, no idea how it came into being in the physical world. And how the hell did Ms. Reddy (who seems more like a marketing executive) figure out what the lead game designer / team leader SRK could not
4. How was Kareena able to keep her husband's death a secret from the neighbours in India? These days when even a burp is reported on the Facebook and/or Tweeted around the world, it seems highly unlikely
5. Why the hell did the robot have to run along the side of the train when running on the top would have been the fastest way to the motorman's cabin?
Frankly, the entire story leaves a lot to be desired
Influences: 1. Poster inspired from Batman Begins 2. The story inspired from Judgement Day (robot saves mother and son from another robot), The Last Action Hero (characters from imaginary world stepping out into the real world), Tron (gaming world characters vs real world characters), Kalicharan (father dies, someone replaces him to protect family), Iron Man (the concept of H.A.R.T. is the same as the arc reactor), Millennium Man (a robot learning about emotions) 3. Scenes inspired from Spiderman series, Batman series, Terminator series, Iron Man series, Rajni's Robot, whew 4. The best moment in the film for me was when the film's shooting was at the factory featured on Pink Floyd's Animals'cover. The only issue is it didn't look half as beautiful
Acting: the less said the better
Overall: Watch at your own risk
SRK may have recovered his investment but he has to remember that he may fool some of the people all the time, all the people some of the time, but he can't fool all the people all the time with his over-the-top marketing gimmicks
P.S. the much vaunted Rajnikanth special appearance seems like its airbrushed on to the reel