Ra.One - Movie Review

Howard Hawks once said a good movie constitutes "3 great scenes and no bad scenes". Ra.One has 3 great scenes and a movie full of bad scenes. The London chase, the train chase sequence which leads to the crumbling of Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminus and the climax have some top notch special effects. We have seen the Empire State Building biting dust in a zillion Hollywood disaster movies ad nauseam that it was refreshing to see some famous Indian monument come down like this in an Indian film. I hope this is only a good beginning and we see a lot of Indian monuments come down in future films.

The dialog writer should be shot. The movie is steeped in tacky dialogs. Allow me to provide a few cases in point. The names of 3 baddie-girls related to Bruce Lee are Iski Lee, Uski Lee, Sabki Lee. The Iron Man kind of contraptions that go into the chests of the super hero and villain are called HART an acronym that turns into something technical and is pronounced 'heart'. Random Access One is Ra.One which is Raavan, the villain in the great Hindu epic. The hero is The Good One and hence abbreviated to G.One and means 'life' via the Hindi word Jeevan. These are all High School level cringe-worthy jokes and puns that have no place in a work of this magnitude. If one tries to convince me that this movie is aimed at children then it is defying the smartness of children and the argument falls doubly flat because at many levels the jokes factor in a lot of sexual innuendo.

Kareena Kapoor gives a constant running commentary on what is going on on-screen to the extent that one might expect the movie to be converted into an audio cassette. She does a terrific turn as a villain for 30 seconds and she deserves to be in a well made full length horror movie. It's a side of her we have never seen before. A word on Rajini's cameo: He looked like something out of Madame Tussaud's. Shah Rukh Khan should never attempt things like playing a caricature of a Tamilian. It is utterly unconvincing. As a contrast, the movie itself offers a very good South Indian imitation by Satish Shah. It is a good lesson in how the representation of a stereotype works and how it doesn't. Arjun Rampal should be allowed to just stand there on screen - he should never be allowed to open his mouth. In one of the final scenes SRK catches his crown jewels and he emotes saying 'Yeh kya kar rahe ho G.One' and SRK gives a dead pan reply 'mujhe bhi nahin maloom'. It is like two adolescents 'discovering' themselves. I expect Ra.One to become a cult classic some 20 years down - so much that people will watch it in the class of movies where one says it-is-so-bad-it-is-good. The film is strictly for SRK fans.

2.5 out of 5 Stars (half star because I am an SRK fan)

Comments

[Deepali]

Brilliant!!!!!!

[Ravindra Prabhala]

Great one ...Arvind. Waiting for your review of Panja.

[Arvind Swarup Pathiki]

@Deepali: Glad you liked it.
@Ravindra: It's been ages since we last said 'Hello', what? hope things are going good with you. are you still with SAP Labs? Thank you for dropping by. In the case of Panja, i would first like to read some reviews and then attempt to watch the film. He he. I dont trust Pawan Kalyan's films any more.

[Ajit]

Please write more often

[ameya]

A good movie to enjoy with your family..........

[telugu movie list]

it was an good review waiting for more good reviews

[Legend]

Ptche...Such a good review wasted on a pathetic stinker...shoddy screenplay,huh?Some movies apparently are made for 'turkey minds'...Maybe you should rated it in turkeys than in stars ;)

[Legend]

*have rated

[telugu good movies list]

that was a good review thanx yaar u gave a full information about the movie

[Arvind Swarup Pathiki]

@Legend: Smiles.