Ra.One Review – makes me want a “Raw” One

As most of you know, I usually don’t watch Hindi movies in the theaters. And even more, I had made it a point not to watch a Shah Rukh Khan movie. But with Ra.One, I decided to make an exception, for the only reason that Thalaivar Rajnikanth appears in it for one scene. I will get to that scene somewhere later in the review.

In my humble opinion, Ra.One is 
basically shit. Sorry for the coarse language, but nothing else describes it better. Oh wait, there is a better word for it – Bull Shit. Like my friend Raghu said, this movie is not only an insult to science-fiction aficionados, it is also an insult to the collective intelligence (not in any order) of Chartered accountants, software professionals, RTO agents, rapists and if I may add, even to A.Raja and K.Kanimozhi!

The loopholes in the story – not the plot, but the story – are so gaping, that our entire Solar system and the Milky Way can pass through it. And when you go into the screenplay, you can create your own Black hole along with a Supernova. If my previous sentence made sense, well, you must be Shah Rukh Khan or anyone of the other names listed in IMDB. 

There is this thing called poetic liberty that great writers and poets have used to create awesome works of literature. It involves bending of the grammar of the language, just to accentuate the impact they want to create. On the other hand, you cannot do such things with science, because it is just plain simple straight-forward logic. Yet, writers of science fiction movies in Hollywood have been known to bend these rules.

But the writers in Ra.One, have gone one step ahead – they have broken them, formulated their own and have broken that as well. Maybe I am too dumb to understand it, but I prefer remaining that way! I will simply assume that the virtual-reality-enters-real-world nonsense that they depicted, as being 100% perfect and focus my review on the other parts of the movie.

Shekar (Shah Rukh Khan) is a Tamil guy married to a Punjabi girl, living in London, has a son with a gender-questionable hair style and works in a Gaming company. His son thinks that his dad isn’t cool and based on a dinner discussion, he goes ahead and creates a game where the villain (Ra.One) has infinite powers. Obviously, he also creates a hero (G.One, incidentally a look-alike of this father) who can conquer him, but has only 0.01% (a number quoted quite frequently in the movie) to defeat the villain.

This Ra.One develops Artificial Intelligence (by virtue of the computer being positioned under a board that said Artificial Intelligence), comes out of the computer and takes form in the real world, kills Shekar and goes in search of his son. And that because, the son started playing the game and left it incomplete and Ra.One needs him to continue the game so that he can win the game!

Ra.One then manages to kill anyone who is not Lucifer (the nickname with which the son plays the game) and that includes the game-creating father. The son is able to deduce that it was Ra.One who killed his father, goes back to his father’s office to investigate and ends up bringing Ra.One there. He manages to escape from there, along with his mother and while they are on the way to the airport (returning to India), they are attacked by Ra.One. And soon, we get to see G.One make his appearance, finish off Ra.One (temporarily of course) and help the mother-son duo return to India.

Ra.One manages to come back to life (!) and reaches India as well. There is the mandatory fight sequence after which, G.One kills Ra.One and destroys itself. The mother-son then return to London and lo behold, the son now manages to resurrect G.One. But more importantly and thankfully, the movie ended at that point.

Let us now look into the glitches:

1. Shah Rukh Khan, as Shekar, has portrayed the most unconvincing cross-culture depiction ever. I thought that Kamal as a Punjabi and American in Dasavatharam was ridiculous, but SRK has now taken it a level below.
   He has just not been able to convince anyone that he is a Tamilian. The hideous curly-hair wig didn’t help his cause. Neither does his laboured rendition of 3 Tamil phrases. Even those 3 Tamil phrases have been delivered with the strongest Hindi accent possible.
   This is one Tamil guy who speaks perfect Hindi, has North Indian accented English and yet struggles to say 3 simple phrases in Tamil. And do you know what those phrases are? “Ingae Vaa” which in his rendition sounds “Engae Vaa”, “Vaaya moodu” which sounds anything otherwise and something else, which I assumed was Tamil since it didn’t sound like English and Hindi.
   The only correct thing he did as a Tamilian was eating his noodles with curd. But you can argue that only a TamBrahm is curd crazy, but at least, it is Tamil. 
2. Abba. The kid constantly keeps saying Abba and not Appa. Even other characters refer to the kid’s father as Abba and not Appa. Couldn’t they get that right in dubbing at least? 
3. Ra.One crushes the game creator on the road. He then launches some massive blast to the car and has it thrown into the river. Net-net, you expect a totally decomposed body.
   But, they show him in a casket, dressed in a suit and having a very blissful look! I agree they were in London and so, the dead body may have been delivered in a casket. But why did they dress him up in a suit and place him in a casket?
   Don’t Hindus send away their dead in a different manner? Also, why was everyone wearing black? North Indians are always dressed in White for funerals and there is no such dress code for South Indians. So did the family suddenly become Christians? 
4. Everyone in Shekar’s office constantly talks in Hindi. They are all Indians, except for the token Chinese guy. I am okay with everyone speaking Hindi, because I am willing to assume that they wanted to avoid sub-titles for dialogues of non-Hindi speaking characters. But then in one other scene, Shekar talks to the Chinese guy in Hindi, apologises and then talks in English! Inconsistent.
5. When Ra.One comes to “life”, it destroys the lab where the gaming folk created it. After Shekar’s death, when the son visits the lab to check his theory that Ra.One killed Shekar, we are shown the lab to be in that same state of destruction.
   The point to be noted is that after Shekar’s death, we have the mandatory sad song, where different montages of the grieving mother and son are shown over many days! Also in the lab, only after the son speaks to Shekar’s Chinese friend (actually Ra.One in disguise), does the dead body of the Chinese guy fall out in front of the son and Shekar’s colleague.
   So, basically, nobody went up to the lab for a few days and nobody looked for this Chinese guy. The awesome part of it is that the colleague is this Chinese guy’s fiancé. Ever heard of a girlfriend who doesn't keep a tab on where her boyfriend is for more than 3 hours? 
6. Why do they have to bring in Karva Chauth even in this movie? This Karva Chauth sentiment in Hindi movies is getting worse than the Thaali sentiment in Tamil movies. 
7. Talking of Karva Chauth, they actually show it as coming ahead of Vijayadashami! A basic google search will tell you that the sequence is different. 
8. The Chamak Chalo song is apparently part of the Birthday party for the kid! If this is how kids’ birthday parties are being celebrated, these days, I want to be invited to such parties. The skin show in that song is really too high, especially considering the fact that the person (Kareena) showing the skin is depicted as one who covers her son’s ears when the word condom is mentioned! 
9. The train that is running away without control – couldn’t the Railway authorities simply shut-down the power lines to ensure that the train stops? Also, at the final stage, G.One is able to bring down the speed of the engine to almost zero (they show the RPM meter falling rapidly) and yet, this single engine (of an EMU) jumps its track, runs through the CST station and only after a great effort from G.One, does it stop in the main road. WTF? 
10. The family has an amazing house in London and moves down to Mumbai. Into an existing house which is perfectly maintained, though nobody lives there. Impressive! 
11. The son is able to revive G.One at the end of the movie? I guess being an expert in playing games gives you that ability.
12. Now the Rajni scene. Thalaiva, why the hell do you agree to do this scene? They didn’t show you as yourself. They even mocked you a little. And you didn’t even show us your eyes. Have you still not recovered? Thalaiva, you have let us down – not to the levels of Baba, but quite close. 
13. In that entire scene (before and after Thalaivars arrival), the acting of Kareena was really out of place. She is first shown as being tough on G.One, since she is in an understandable state of confusion – natural for someone who has lost a loved one to have mixed emotions when faced with something that is created by her husband, that looks exactly like him (probably better) and keeps saying that it is going to protect her.
    But just 2-3 dialogues into the scene, she starts reacting in slapstick fashion to everything that transpires around her. This is of course not her fault – it is just bad direction. 
14. When Rajni appears as Chitti, G.One’s console shows some text that says “Chitti. Identified.”
    But when Ra.One takes up Kareena’s form and takes away the son, G.One couldn’t identify it. 

I don’t want to recollect more such glitches, since I am afraid that they may reside in my memory forever. The only redemption factor was that I watched the movie in 3D and so Kareena looked hotter than usual. But again, despite being a 3D movie, there was nothing in terms of special 3D effects. 

Before I wind up, I suggest that you watch “I, Robot” and all the “Terminator” movies (esp. Part 2). Then watch Ra.One to understand how Indian movie makers are influenced by movies made 10-20 years back and yet end up making something unpalatable.

P.S.: While coming to the parking lot, I was airing my views to my friend that this movie has made Enthiran appear to be a better movie. Some 3 guys who were walking 30 feet ahead of us, stopped, turned towards us and one of them asked me “What do you feel about this movie?” I replied, “Horrible”. He gave a very satisfied smile and said “Habbabda. We all felt the same way.”