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?
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Monday, 11 October 2010
Thursday, 28 May 2009
Sarvamm, upset mayam
I've never been much of a movie goer. I'm more of a movie watcher. However, of late, I've dived headlong into the watching business thanks to a generous offer from Cineworld Cinemas that permits me to watch n number of movies a month, and in return for the privilege I transfer a set amount of funds from my bank account to Cineworld. It works for me and them, a win-win situation, one might say.
My policy for watching Tamil movies, until recently was to only watch something that the whole of Tamilnadu raved about for no less than 6 months. Those films are usually graced with my patronage at the movie theatres.
Now, in typical Indian isshtyle, I watch as many movies as my schedule accommodates, just to get some paisa vasool.
While in mood to confess, I might also add that I never review movies. I'm going to break that practice as well. This post is about Sarvamm.
The movie stars Arya and Trisha. The reason we zeroed in on this particular Tamil movie is because it was the only one running within a 5000 mile radius. Bad move.
The movie starts off with Arya beating someone black and blue, no explanations offered. I suppose the person getting beaten is a symbolic reference to the audience. Then there's a tacky song in which Arya entertains the audience with a performance in which he only has 2 left feet. Maybe someone should inform him of the fact that he can't dance. The song, I'm informed by the wife, has been sung by Illayaraja. He's clearly out of touch with singing, but I'm sure we can endure 5 minutes of cacophony in favour of the grander scheme of things.
This is followed by a go-karting nee, bumper car, race which sets up the introduction for Trisha. I'm not sure if its the screen at my local multiplex or if that's the real deal, Trisha doesn't even look all that pretty in this movie, she looks skinny and malnourished. The lack of looks further accentuates the absence of acting.
What follows is a grinding, nail pullingly irritating 45 minutes in which Arya tries to woo Trisha. In the middle of all this, the villain and his sidekick get introduced, resulting in the untimely death of an undertaker for no reason whatsoever. The villain is totally devoid of any expression (I have a sneaking suspicion that he tries to be that way). Bad guy stalks another bloke who has no relation at all to Trisha or Arya. How the stalkee manages to stay one step ahead of the stalker while maintaining the same standard of living, changing cars, houses, schools for his kid etc., etc., without once worrying about money or the means of earning it boggles the mind.
Somewhere around the interval, the two independent plots are loosely connected, setting up the pace for the second half, which, I admit is a half decent thriller.
Other mind boggling matters include Arya not getting affected even after getting struck by a poisonous knife, the presence of king cobras in the jungles of Munnar, not rare sightings, but a dime a dozen.
However, good prevails of stupid at the end of the day. What especially amazes me is, the director seems to have had the amazing sense to stall any progress in the 'storyline'. It's almost as if the director decided to have 3,240,213 songs in the movie, to be inserted anytime the story heated up. I suppose the conversation at the editing stage would have been something like this, "Hmm, the story is getting too interesting, olddown here, lets have a song here, here and here. Oh, lets also have a song here, just to spice things up!"
Overall it was a pretty disappointing movie. Do you know what was the most upsetting bit? I ignored several divine messages to catch this movie. I first tried to watch the movie before it released (mixed-up the release dates), then missed the bus (quite literally) and therefore missed the show, and even had a fight just before leaving thereby cancelling the movie plan. I went and watched it against all odds and I'd have been a very disappointed man had I paid money for this. Thank God for the Unlimited Pass!
My policy for watching Tamil movies, until recently was to only watch something that the whole of Tamilnadu raved about for no less than 6 months. Those films are usually graced with my patronage at the movie theatres.
Now, in typical Indian isshtyle, I watch as many movies as my schedule accommodates, just to get some paisa vasool.
While in mood to confess, I might also add that I never review movies. I'm going to break that practice as well. This post is about Sarvamm.
The movie stars Arya and Trisha. The reason we zeroed in on this particular Tamil movie is because it was the only one running within a 5000 mile radius. Bad move.
The movie starts off with Arya beating someone black and blue, no explanations offered. I suppose the person getting beaten is a symbolic reference to the audience. Then there's a tacky song in which Arya entertains the audience with a performance in which he only has 2 left feet. Maybe someone should inform him of the fact that he can't dance. The song, I'm informed by the wife, has been sung by Illayaraja. He's clearly out of touch with singing, but I'm sure we can endure 5 minutes of cacophony in favour of the grander scheme of things.
This is followed by a go-karting nee, bumper car, race which sets up the introduction for Trisha. I'm not sure if its the screen at my local multiplex or if that's the real deal, Trisha doesn't even look all that pretty in this movie, she looks skinny and malnourished. The lack of looks further accentuates the absence of acting.
What follows is a grinding, nail pullingly irritating 45 minutes in which Arya tries to woo Trisha. In the middle of all this, the villain and his sidekick get introduced, resulting in the untimely death of an undertaker for no reason whatsoever. The villain is totally devoid of any expression (I have a sneaking suspicion that he tries to be that way). Bad guy stalks another bloke who has no relation at all to Trisha or Arya. How the stalkee manages to stay one step ahead of the stalker while maintaining the same standard of living, changing cars, houses, schools for his kid etc., etc., without once worrying about money or the means of earning it boggles the mind.
Somewhere around the interval, the two independent plots are loosely connected, setting up the pace for the second half, which, I admit is a half decent thriller.
Other mind boggling matters include Arya not getting affected even after getting struck by a poisonous knife, the presence of king cobras in the jungles of Munnar, not rare sightings, but a dime a dozen.
However, good prevails of stupid at the end of the day. What especially amazes me is, the director seems to have had the amazing sense to stall any progress in the 'storyline'. It's almost as if the director decided to have 3,240,213 songs in the movie, to be inserted anytime the story heated up. I suppose the conversation at the editing stage would have been something like this, "Hmm, the story is getting too interesting, olddown here, lets have a song here, here and here. Oh, lets also have a song here, just to spice things up!"
Overall it was a pretty disappointing movie. Do you know what was the most upsetting bit? I ignored several divine messages to catch this movie. I first tried to watch the movie before it released (mixed-up the release dates), then missed the bus (quite literally) and therefore missed the show, and even had a fight just before leaving thereby cancelling the movie plan. I went and watched it against all odds and I'd have been a very disappointed man had I paid money for this. Thank God for the Unlimited Pass!
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