Shahrukh Khan’s new film Ra.One is good enough for the Indian and NRI chutiyas who come merely upon hearing the name of a Khan or Rajinikant.
But for discerning souls like yours truly who have higher expectations, the Bollywood super-hero science fiction flick Ra.One is a failure of imagination.
One more in a long list of disappointing Bollywood films.
Deja Vu
It’s a mighty shame that Indian film-makers who can’t even make simple movies have lately developed a restless itch on their cojones to put out super-hero movies.
Ah, the chutzpah!
First, there was Hrithik Roshan’s Krishh a few years back, then Rajinikant’s Enthiran last year and now we have Shahrukh’s Ra.One.
In a testament to the lack of imagination and originality, there’s virtually nothing in Ra.One that we haven’t seen before in Hollywood super-hero films or even Indian copycats like Enthiran.
Neither the ho-hum story nor the seen-it-all-before action scenes in Ra.One (story and direction by Anubhav Sinha) impressed us. Not one tiny bit.
Jumping on trains, running on walls, hurling cars, leaping in the air, stopping bullets and generally doing an Arnold Schwarzenegger is all so passe at best and tedious at worst without a gripping story to accompany the high octane activity.
Also, Ra.One is low on emotional quotient and fails to make a connection with the audience, at least the part of the viewers that doesn’t come merely at hearing the echo of Shahrukh’s name.
The story in its essence is about an angry super-villain Ra.One breaking out of the virtual world of a video game and entering into the real world in pursuit of a young boy Lucifer/Prateek (newcomer Armaan Verma), son of the game’s creator Shekhar Subramaniam (Shahrukh Khan). Continue reading »
King Khan’s super hero movie Ra.One has drawn ho-hum reviews from Indian critics.
Here are excerpts from a bunch of Indian critics:
NDTV
But, on the whole, RA.One is far too derivative to take anybody except the most gullible of moviegoers…
But, sorry, this isn’t ‘the next level’ of Hindi cinema, let alone superhero flicks. At least, let us all hope it isn’t. Comic-strip terminators do have their uses. However, when the idea is to whip up a bubbling brew that, in the time-honoured tradition of a Mumbai mass entertainer, seeks to embrace a bit of everything, the wannabe desi Superman can only fall between two very, very tall stools. But not everybody will hear the thud, though.
RA.One is like a colourful Popsicle that looks tantalising, tickles the palate while it lasts, but leaves no particular after-taste. Sound and fury? Loads of it. Significance? Not much.
Rediff
Even as Shah Rukh Khan flies over buildings, jumps over cars and even stops an out-of-control train with his bare hands, his valiant efforts to wow his audiences somewhat fail thanks to a weak storyline, some rather juvenile acting and a poor screenplay.
To make matters more unbearable, the dialogues go from bad to worse and Vishal-Shekhar’s music — barring a couple of numbers — has little to offer in a film that could have possibly ushered in an era of science fiction cinema in mainstream Bollywood.
Reuters India
Unfortunately, movie-making involves a lot more than just good product placements and marketing. It needs heart, and in spite of the sci-fi theme and hi-tech technology, “Ra.One” doesn’t have heart.
The weak link in this movie is the direction by Anubhav Sinha, your attention will waver a lot — the pace isn’t fast enough for a super-hero action flick and there are some inane dialogues that will make you laugh. Sinha tries to pack in every single element into the film, with the end result being it looks haphazard.
…Also, for a villain supposed to be evil and unbeatable, Ra One is surprisingly colourless and dull, preventing you from investing any sort of emotion for him — he just leaves you cold and Arjun Rampal’s expressionless acting is partly to blame.
IBN Live
…ambitious but flawed superhero film – every time we’re drawn into the simplistic but intriguing story of how Ra.One can only be vanquished by the game’s superhero G.One (also played by Shah Rukh), director Anubhav Sinha feels the desperate need to inject a dance number or a comical sequence or a melodramatic interlude into the narrative. It’s distracting from the superhero theme and more importantly, it makes the film clunky.
What’s missing from ‘Ra.One’ is a sure-footed director’s touch. Anubhav Sinha fails to bring all the elements together, and while this superhero film has plenty sound and fury, it’s sorely lacking slickness.
Economic Times
Shah Rukh Khan’s superhero character takes too long to boot in this science fiction flick. G.One arrives just five minutes before the interval point by when you have already restarted your system several times, which has been hanging into nothingness. And the film’s title character Ra.One, a skeletal villain, gets a face (Arjun Rampal) even later in the second half. Is it worth the wait? Only intermittently and inconsistently!
It’s certainly not a ‘dream’ start for the film with a tacky video game prologue merely to accommodate starry cameos of Sanjay Dutt and Priyanka Chopra. Not only does director Anubhav Sinha take too long to arrive, the initial proceedings don’t contribute much to the film either. Too much of screen-time is expended on vulgar jokes and tomfoolery.
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Ra.One Review – A Failure of Imagination
Bodyguard Box Office – Tasteless Desis Lap Up Trash
Generations of Indians to come will rub their eyes in disbelief, shake their heads in a daze, look on in a rage and cringe in shame that as late as 2011, when tiny nations like South Korea, Denmark and Israel were producing dazzling movies, Bollywood filmmakers were still churning out mind-numbing, odious garbage like Bodyguard (and that too featuring a cowardly murderer).
Folks, even by the morbidly disgusting standards of Bollywood, Bodyguard represents a new low watermark.
We were so depressed after watching this junk that we were tempted to end our life on the New Jersey Turnpike.
It was only the sad – sob-sob – thought of orphaning all you schmucks that prompted us to change our mind.
Now, you know how much we love y’all. 
The ne plus ultra of trash, this so-called movie makes a mockery of the art form known as movie-making and throws up a foul smelling vomit on the screen for over two hours.
Written and directed by a South Indian half-wit named Siddique, Bodyguard pairs a real-life aging Indian criminal named Salman Khan with that size zero bimbo Kareena Kapoor sporting a perennial vacuous, hey-hey-I-am-a-retard expression.
A story that’s the Mount Everest of nonsense, acting that’s hopelessly incompetent, music wholly inadequate and an irritating (un)comic angle provided not a second’s respite to yours truly from the unceasing torture unfolding on the screen.
At a theater on the East Coast in the U.S., there were about 18 people for the opening show of Bodyguard.
Our guess is at least 10 of the viewers were Muslims. Go figure.
Asinine Story
A rich man Sartaj Rana (Raj Babbar) hires a bodyguard Lovely Singh (Salman Khan) to protect his young college student daughter Divya (Kareena Kapoor) from a deadly group bent on doing her injury.
Now, don’t ask us why.
Hey, this is a Salman Khan movie. Ask the wrong question and the star might drive his SUV over you. 
Our bodyguard with the swollen cheeks, bluetooth earpiece, dark glasses, rippling muscles and the eight-pack body soon starts following the girl around like a shadow, into the ladies’ toilet (no kidding), into the class-room, into the gym and where not.
Much to the girl’s chagrin, who decides to throw the spanner in the works. Soon, the girl Divya feigns to be another college student Chaaya and keeps calling up our bodyguard, praising his hot body and eventually declaring her love for him.
Our bodyguard must surely be a blithering idiot since he’s blissfully unaware that it’s his ‘Madam Divya’ behind the prank. Continue reading »
We are Family Review – Disgustingly Bad
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Sep 032010
We are Family: Ohhh, We are a Box Office Disaster
There are bad Bollywood movies.
Then there are very bad Bollywood movies.
Finally, there are the disgustingly, terribly bad Bollywood movies like We are Family (Kajol, Kareena Kapoor and Arjun Rampal) that are unworthy of even being screened in theaters.
Surely, a special place is reserved in hell for the Shaitans (makers and cast) involved with the Karan Johar produced We Are Family.
Not so much a movie as cow-dung flung on the screen, We Are Family suffers from intolerably hideous acting, incomprehensibly awful screenplay and insanely bad music.
That we managed to come out of the movie-hall with our sanity intact after sitting through this nightmare is nothing short of a miracle.
Pitiful Remake of Stepmom
As all but the schmucks know by now, We are Family is a remake of the 1998 Hollywood film Stepmom (featuring the peerless Susan Sarandon and Pretty Woman Julia Roberts).
Stepmom is hardly a masterpiece and yet it’s a million times more watchable than We are Family. Continue reading »
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