Movie Review: Ra.One

Bollywood, the name evokes singing and dancing, large choreographed pieces, love and romance but never any actual kissing. Now let's add science fiction to that list with special effects galore and 3D and a mention that this movie now holds the record for the most expensive Bollywood film ever made. There are a lot of good points to this cinematic endeavour and there are a number of not so good points which explains why the critics have been giving mixed reviews.

Let's start with a not so good point. Anubhav Sinha who both wrote the story and directed the movie must have had a target audience of kids in mind. The whole idea centers on a computer game and the characters in the game crossing over into real life. Sorry, this is where I roll my eyes. Tron Legacy tried to thrill me with its computer generated world but the story was so juvenile, it just didn't capture my imagination like, for instance, The Matrix. Ra.One has the same problem. Maybe if I was a fourteen year old kid I may have been enthralled with this gaming stuff translated in live characters. Unfortunately, I'm not 14 years old. Some may say I'm just being an old fuddy duddy but you have to have a little more meat to your story than what Mr. Sinha has come up with. Then again, I wasn't too thrilled with Transformers but I can see those who went nuts for that movie would find this story captivating.

Shahrukh Khan is quite versatile and this film affords him an opportunity to show all his talents. I can see why he has been given the much deserved moniker of The King of Bollywood. While he does a great job of playing the handsome hero kicking butt, he is very, very amusing playing the more goofy game developer. He is so goofy; I found it hard to believe his wife turns out to be the beautiful Kareena Kapoor. However, at a party when the Akon song Criminal starts playing, Mr. Goofy turns into a surprisingly charming dancer. That's when I realised why Kareena Kapoor would have fallen for him.

Speaking of Akon, later in the film we have the choreographed scene with the Akon song Chammak Challo. These big dance numbers are the hallmark of Bollywood films and this film doesn't disappoint in that regard even though it is technically a science fiction movie. I've included the videos for Criminal and Chammak Challo below as I greatly enjoyed them.

I went expecting the film to be in Hindi with subtitles. I was surprised at how much of it was in English. What? I'm still wondering if English crops up that much in everyday speech or if the film maker added the English with an eye on an international market. A couple of scenes where somebody was talking about computer technology and threw in the occasional English technical term was anticipated but then somebody would throw in an entire English expression or just switch to English altogether. What? I'm confused