Director Anubhav Sinha
Cast Shah Rukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Arjun Rampal, Armaan Verma, Shahana Goswami, Dalip Tahil, Satish Shah, Suresh Menon, Sanjay Dutt, Rajanikant, Tom Wu
Year 2011
Genre Action
I had passed judgement on RA. One after seeing the first trailer itself. It looked so much like Tron Legacy that I was completely turned off with the idea of RA.One. You could argue with me that I get too biased too soon but my regular readers would agree with me that of late, I have tried my very best, not to be biased at all – and successfully at that. I was in fact hoping and praying for a good movie to begin an otherwise dull Diwali day. However, it was not meant to be. Approximately 100 seconds into the movie, when you come across the characters of Lucifer and Desi Girl (Priyanka Chopra), you do check if you are in the right movie hall. And then the corniest characters of all come in – Bruce Lee’s sisters i.e. Iski Lee, Uski Lee and Sabki Lee and you are left, yet again praying that it is just a bad start to an otherwise good movie. But the final nail on the coffin is drilled about 2 minutes later when the Khalnayak i.e. Villain (Sanjay Dutt) says, “Abhi Spiderman ko maarke aaya hoon – Baygon Spray se”.
About 140 minutes later (if you survive that long), you are left with teeth that have almost been chewed and hair that is disheveled to say the least. You have just been subjected to the latest method of torture (cannot venture to comment on the country of origin because I have yet to discover the same) – movies designed for the IQ of a 2 year old. It progressively reduces itself over time to the IQ of a 1 year old over the period as defined 2 sentences back. Not surprising therefore that the cricket team of kids to my right had a blast. I can assure you that us adults would not get what the hullabaloo is all about. The guy at the snacks counter did mention to me, “Bachchon ki film hai sir” (It’s a movie meant for kids.
Anubhav Sinha is not best known for producing block buster movies as such but Cash and Tathasthu weren’t really atrocious if you know what I mean. They were slickly made and had reasonable consistency. At least they didn’t show Karwa Chauth before Dushera… duh!!!! Come on Mr. Sinha you could have at least sequenced your movie well. And lets not go down the direction track because poor Anubhav seems to have lost whatever basic capabilities he had in this department.
One cannot expect much in the acting department when King Khan is sharing screen space with the appallingly irritable Kareena Kapoor – some may argue that she looks heavenly in the movie but I can assure you that the only angels you will find in the movie are those which are referred to in a couple of sentences. Newbie child artiste – Armaan Verma looks more like a girl than a boy throughout the movie. I mean whats with his hair yaar??? And girls who thought would get a glimpse of the chiseled Arjun Rampal would be disappointed with his 4 minutes and 38.5 seconds on screen in the role of Pi / 2 aka Ra.One. Shahana Goswami is much too talented to be wasted on movies like these. Please to be reconsidering your choices in future.
Overdoing the Tamil angle also didn’t quite go well with my roots. And whats with “Paityakaran (Mad Man)” playing continuously in the background for about 10 mins after the movie started. The only Tamil angle and probably the only good part of the movie was the 30 seconds that the one and only superstar of today made his presence felt. As the joke goes, Shah Rukh made a 2.5 hour special appearance in the movie that was led by Thalaivar. Rajani just dazzles in the role of Chitti.
Discouraging you from watching RA One will fall on deaf years because it is destined to beat Bodyguard in terms of first week collections. But try to avoid it. Its no more than a 3 on 10 and that too for some good special effects and of course the track that is going to be around for a while – Chammak Challo
Oh yes and as I had tweeted – taking inspiration from Tron or Hancock or Iron Man or Terminator is definitely acceptable. But doing the same from “You Don’t mess with the Zohan”???? What??? Zohan??? Come on Anubhav Sinha – what in the blazes were you thinking.
Sorry about the longish review. An extremely frustrated viewer here as you can see.
On the day of release of these movies there was mix reaction of people. It didn't get 100% appreciation from all viewers and it just make me to lose interest. I haven't see it till now but may see this Sunday.
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