Ra.One promised all you could ever ask for in a Hindi movie: arguably the greatest superstar ever in Hindi cinema donning the role of a superhero, international names like Akon, Hans Zimmer (background score, The Dark Knight fame), Tom Wu and ‘never before’ sci-fi effects. And though they failed to rope in Jackie Chan and Lady Gaga, the left-over canvas being filled by our own Rajnikant (Sanjay Dutt and Priyanka Chopra are not that exciting prospects!). Shahrukh went a bit overboard with marketing that lasted for around a year. A brave move indeed but by the time the release actually came near the audience started getting exhausted by a 24X7 Shahrukh. But still the hype was expected to be worth an experience. But Ra.One fails at levels where movies should actually score: direction and script. In one of the early scenes, the protagonist Shekhar Subramanium (Shahrukh Khan) is seen eating Chinese food mixed with curd in Indian style (with fingers and not chopsticks!). It best describes the story. Superheroes mixed with video-games mixed with comedy mixed with drama mixed with father-child relation mixed with husband-wife relation mixed with un-necessary dance sequences mixed with god-knows what else. The outcome, at the risk of sounding obvious, does not taste good. With so many ingredients it in, the story fails to justify any of it and the plot never develops properly.
The story begins at not so ‘dreamy’ note with Shahrukh fighting Khalnayak (Sanjay Dutt, yes he’s called THAT in movie) to help damsel (Priyanka Chopra) in trouble. The sequence does not add anything to the storyline and ends abruptly (it’s a dream sequence remember? And dreams in Hindi movies end pre-maturely). The story actually begins with a geeky father, Shekhar trying to teach good-is-nice things to his son Prateek (Armaan Verma). He acquiesces to his dude son’s demand to make the villain of his next video-game ‘cool and bad’. After a complex set of events, the baddie Ra.One in videogame, Akashi (Tom Wu) comes into real life and kills Shekhar and is now in search of Lucifer aka Prateek who left the game unfinished. Now Shahrukh-looking G.One, the good hero of the game, jumps into his suit and becomes real in order to protect Prateek. He kills Ra.One for a while but Ra.One enlivens himself again (technicalities you see!) this time as Arjun Rampal. As we know, goodness wins and Ra.One is killed again.
The movie never takes crisp direction and the moment you think the super-hero story is now on course, a cheap slapstick comedy or dragging emotional scene holds it back. The movie is interspersed with buffoonery, which is annoying and hardly funny (Salman Khan funny though). The train sequence would have been gripping had we not seen it in Robot, and the demolition of Victoria Terminus is technically well-crafted. Dialouges are mostly vapid although the background score is a treat.
Armaan Verma is strictly okay. Kareena Kapoor’s role is poorly developed which is surprising given the screen time she has been provided. She delivers nothing in terms of performance but a Chammak Challo, which is well-choreographed. Arjun Rampal surprisingly does not have that much of footage and he does an okay job of keeping that single expression throughout the movie. It is saddening to see a talent like Shahrukh to enact such poorly written clownish roles. He pulls it off with ease and as well as he always does. Shahrukh should understand that it is not year 2000 and even Sachin has changed his game immensely since then. He needs to choose scripts which do not have romance in it just for the heck of it (MNIK and now Ra.One). And no matter how loudly you say, you cannot make a superhero movie with a budget of Rs 100 crore (assuming that the other 50 went for marketing). Ra.One will hardly appeal to his loyal NRI audience (Superheros? Really? They see Hollywood too, remember?). If the movie was made for children, Shahrukh got it completely wrong (the comedy derives help from every possible sexually gratifying body parts). The movie is one time watchable and Shahrukh’s fans will savor every inch of his presence on screen after almost two years ( I did :) ). Watch for some of its decent action and tech-sequences.
My ratings 3/5
Post Script: The theatrical teaser of Don2 looked promising (only if Shahrukh could stop over-doing his baritone) and I look forward to it. :)
