Endhirun

October is usually a monumental month in India each year, day 2 of the month marks the birthday of the Father of Nation - monumental mostly because booze is not available in the 'open' market on that day, day 23 marks the birthday of the Father (mine, of course!) and with Diwali in the vicinity, festivity is in the air.


2010 was different. India was grappling with two other epic events. CWG or Common Wealth Games (not sure what is 'Common' about wealth or what games have to do with Wealth, but what would I know, I'm not a cricketer). And a couple of days before that, the release of Robot a.k.a.for.tax.reasons. Endhiran.


The amount of hype and hoopla surrounding the release of this movie boggled the 'ol noodle. The thing with all Rajnikanth movies is that there is always going to be an atmosphere of festivity in the air, expectation even. Expectation, not of a good movie or *gosh* a story, but of entertainment for the masses. He normally does not disappoint (*cough* 'Baba' *cough*) and the masses' mass hysteria is often appeased. This time though, there was a critical difference. Gone were the trademark introduction songs where he astounds one and all by doing completely varied things like ride a motorcycle, horse, cycle, bus, auto-rickshaw or something equally varied before the ol' song and dance around what his name is and what his beliefs are for that movie. Sterling stuff, all that. None of that in this movie. None at all. Zilch, Nada.

Once cannot accuse the old top of not doing anything different in this movie though. For instance, there was not a single scene of him smoking a beedi. He was also playing the role of a geek and technocrat in this movie, something that must have been hard to pull off for a guy who is in his elements in more labour intensive roles. He has also proved that he is a man of his words. Back in the nineties, he wowed the world by warning all baddies that anything he says needs to be compounded by a factor of 100 in order to comprehend the magnitude and seriousness with which he says anything. Now he's proved he backs that by making one robot which multiplied itself a 100 times to devastate Chennai. Kudos.

For a movie that has been set in 2010, the story is about as watertight as a piece of gauze. Due to reasons of health and safety, I am not going to review the movie. I would say, though, that had the story been set in 2050 or something that establishes it as science fiction, I may have enjoyed it a bit more.

Just like Chitti the Robot is amazing, I find his creator's car, the Mercedes CLK convertible amazing. In the movie, it appears to have powers that even Chitti does not have. For example, when Chitti gets behind the wheel for the first time, he drives the car straight into the median, which, among other things, takes out the front right fender and most of the front bumper, but by the very next scene, when they pull into the good scientist's house, the car is gleaming and spotless - it has the powers of self healing! How cool is that. Then there's the scene where Chitti snatches Aishwarya from her wedding and takes off in the Merc, a whole army of Indian security forces materialises in seconds and dumps an entire years' supply of bullets in the general direction of the car, and yet it still chugs on, old faithful, what! I simply loved the way the car could do wheelies, jump over bridges, drive over trucks, get shot at by everything except nuclear bombs and still outrun all badies. I resolved at the movie that my next car would only be bought if it could do at least 1 of the above, its no point owning an automobile that is going to go kaput the moment you run over a nail or run into something as silly as a wall.

On a side note, I don't know what all the fuss about security at the CWG is all about. In the couple of minutes it took Chitti to reach the main road from the wedding hall, an entire army materialised. If that level of security could be provided to an individual who is just a scientist, i.e., not a movie star or politician, then sportsmen have no need to worry. Its all safe and secure.

In order to see the movie about the robot that can only be destroyed with an axe, the wife and I took our chances against the elements, risking life, limb and dry clothes, only to return disappointed. The Gods were chucking it down with a vengeance in bleary old Blighty on the Saturday night that we decided to venture to Cineworld. Cineworld, I might add, is exactly 6 minutes and 30 seconds away from home on the trusty old Burgman. 6 minutes and 30 seconds is all it took for us to get soaked to the bone, the rain was that heavy. We dripped and sploshed our way into the theatre, stood in queue for a further 5 minutes and only on reaching the counter did we notice that all shows for that day were sold out. So we sploshed and soaked our way back home and all but sat in the washing machine to dry out.

The next day, we decided to combine exercise with strategy and ran the 3 miles to the theatre at 10am, only to discover we were the first souls onsite. Not even theatre staff were around. Not recognising the signals from the Gods, we waited. When staff finally arrived onsite, we virtually lynched them and found a couple of seats on the only show available - 8:45pm on a Sunday evening. Notwithstanding the fact that we would be sleepy and tired the next day, we went for it.

Having fulfilled various social commitments, we ran late for the show and anxious to get a good seat, we skipped dinner and went straight in. Around 3.5 hours later, we staggered out, none-the-wiser. To his credit, God gave all the signals and short of hitting us on the head with a kitchen sink and putting up a large neon sign over our heads asking us not to be so over-enthu in going to the movie, he did everything else. I mean, if torrential rain, closed cinemas, sold out shows and lack of food cannot dampen our spirits, what can.

In common with all Rajni movies, we expected too much and this time, we did not get what we bargained for. So Enthiran, for us, became E(zhn)thu run (get up and run). Perhaps if we hadn't been sucked in by the hype, if we hadn't gone through all that trouble to watch the movie, we might have enjoyed it. Perhaps.

P. S.: Couldn't help but wonder, how many tonnes of Botox would the lead pair (or should I say trio) have consumed?