Sunday, October 24, 2010

"What Rajni can, No ROBObody can"…Movie Review - Robot (Enthiran)

Facts of Life - ROBOT (Endhiran in Tamil) is the most expensive movie made in India till date (infact Asia till date), costing just over Rs 162 crore. The team of ROBOT includes SUPERSTAR Rajinikanth, Aishwarya Rai Bacchhan, director Shankar with a technical team which did graphics for Jurassic Park, music maestro A.R.Rehman, singer Mohit Chauhan, etc.

Story –
Story here is not of a classic but of an entertainer (Rajini movies are known to be entertainers i.e. classic entertainers). So, we have the superstar Rajini playing a scientist (Dr. Vaseegaran) with the weirdest hairstyle one can ever imagine (and inspite of that, he has a girlfriend Sana, played by Aishwarya Rai), Clearly the makers wanted to borrow the looks of Galileo and Newton. Dr. Vaseegaran has a dream lab where he assembles his robot (human-android), Chitti. Chitti is covered with the skin of Rajni and therefore, fulfils the ever-hungry appetite of Rajni fans. Dr. Vaseegaran trains Chitti so that it could be selected to help defence services but then comes Danny (Dr. Bohra). During the evaluation round, Danny uses his chattur dimag to puzzle Chitti and inturn gets him rejected from the panel due to its lack of understanding of emotional issues. Vaseegaran fights back, use new theories and sampling techniques to train Chitti and efforts are successful; Chitti learns to love, cry, party, emotional atyachar, etc.
But the age old theory comes true now…man’s invention becomes his own enemy. Chitti starts to love Sana and can do anything to get her. Period. Rest is the fight for mankind to stop the ROBOT…

I have to mention that the first half (1.5 hr) was a smooth ride. However, second half is dragged a bit. The makers of the movie could have shortened the movie by 15 mins. The movie rises to its peak in the last 15 minutes where climax is very nicely shot.

Superstar cast –
SuperStar Rajni is a God in his own way and once you start following him, you don’t question him. Rajinikanth has many irrational jokes dedicated to him and the best part about those jokes is that people do take those with utmost seriousness (example - Rajinikant doesn’t wear a watch. He decides what time it is). This movie is about Dr. Vaseegaran, the scientist and Chitti, the Robot (both played by Rajinikanth). Every second frame has Rajini in it (he is the hero, he is the villain . As a professor, he is humble and fitting. As Chitti, he is ok but not as good as his prof role. The style and the movements are more robotic as expected.
Aishwarya Rai is looking beautiful (especially after Ravan). Danny is usual class (one of the many B-grade actors who comes and acts but never gets appreciated). Rest of the cast was alien to me as I don’t follow southern movies much. But all were good.

Music & Lyrics –
Music given by AR Rehman is standard (just like his CWG anthem). Lyrics - My past experience has made me accustomed to the sometimes funny, sometimes absurd, sometimes technical lyrics of southern movies when they are made into Hindi.
Couple of samples -

1) “Kilimanjaro, ladki parvat ki yaaro
Isska roop nihaaro yaaro yaaro
Mohenjodaro, issko dil mein utaaro
Jungle jungle pukaro yaaro yaaro
(this song was shot at Machu Picchu, one of seven natural wonders of world; many in audience thought this was special effects too)

2) “Pagal anukan pyaar dil mein kitne hain
Neutron electron neelay naino mein bolo kitne hain

Believe it or not! These lyrics are written by Swanand Kirkire (twice winner of National Film Award for Best Lyrics)

Visual Effects –
The money spend can be seen in graphics. The first half is so very beautiful. The visual quality on 70 mm is better than most of bollywood flicks. To maintain the visual quality of similar levels in second half was challenge as a lot of Chitti look-alikes appear and to maintain facial expressions on all them was difficult. That is the only part where visual effects lack. You will have to appreciate the effects when cohesive transformations of robots take place to Anaconda, Terminator, etc.

Acknowledgment – I haven’t seen such in-depth use of technical nomenclature in an Indian movie before. Some fine observations – the name of Dr. Bohra (played by Danny) has a fascinating similarity with Dr. Bohr (pick up any chemistry book and you will find him). Use of ZigBee protocol by the Robot which is a communication protocol similar to Bluetooth. I have to say the engineer inside me was also satisfied appreciating the research behind the technical script. I give half star extra for this.

SPEAKing PICtures’s verdict3.5/10 (see for Rajni if not for anything else). It is not a cult or an excellent movie but surely a 160 crore movie with so much effort needs to be appreciated.

ps: I have seen only a handful of Hindi dubbed south-Indian movies. To say Robot was the best of them won’t be wise. Robot is good, Aparichit was awesome. Interesting fact is both of them were directed by Shankar (awesome visionary skills).