“Ra-One” does not live up to its hype..!

Good or bad ..there were two movies in production last year at the same time with similar plots. People were spreading rumors that one is the copy of other. Both were made with almost equal budgets and equally powerful star cast. But one of them was released first and set a bench mark good movie making in India with all its innovative techniques, approaches, a good story line and many other good things. But the success of this movie became a bottleneck for the other. No one knew what the plot was all about, but the hype around second movie was quite high before its release. At last the movie got released and unfortunately it turned out that it was nowhere near the bench mark set by the first movie.
That is what happened to the latest release Sharukh starrer "Ra.One". It has not been able to break or even match the bench mark set by "Robot".
For all the hype created by Shahrukh's "Ra.One" I watched the movie with my family. Coincidentally even ROBOT was coming up on the same day on SONY TV. That’s all the more reason to compare both of them.
I never get carried away by any reviews on any movie; I just go, watch, feel for myself and then try to see if the director has genuinely tried to deliver a good movie. I watch any movie for the actual movie and not for any stars.
A movie’s success primarily depends on its storyline/plot, narration, screen play, star cast, editing, music, cinematography and then followed by choreography, special effects and sound design..etc.,.
If the primary functions are not doing well in a movie, the enabling functions just become helpless. End result is the movie falls flat on its face. We cannot lift any movie just by doing great in enabling departments.
The storyline of "Ra-One" is quite simple; it is a story of a father and his relation with son, where the father is ready to do anything to impress his son. As per son's wish he will design a computer game where in the bad guy is more powerful and is pitted against a very normal hero. But due to unexpected turn of events, the villain gets into the real life of father, mother and son and tries to kill them. And at the end good wins over evil forces and it is a happy ending.
It is a good imagination..! Not bad all! We could still have got a decent movie had the story been treated with some sensitivity and caution.
As soon as the movie begins , there is a one deliberate sequence involving Sharukh, Priyanka and Sanjay Dutt with some old Bollywood tunes coming up in the background. Till the end I could not relate this anywhere to the main story. It just stands apart. There are many such sequences which do not gel well with the primary story.
The first half revolves around the hero Shekhar Subramaniam, his gaming company, staff, his wife and son and how the bad guy of computer game enters their lives. The characterization of Shekhar as a Tamilian Father settled in UK, his bonding with his MTV class son should have been handled very well. The treatment given to this part is very shoddy. The director would like to say that Shekhar is a traditional Tamilian engineer who respects all family values and a little orthodox and expects his son to be a good guy always. There are many way how this character would have been groomed. We could have borrowed from Sharukhs own character of a NASA Scientist in Swades.
But here hero is eating noodles and curds with hands !!! I don’t think any of our Tamil friends would agree to these kind of scenes. It just does not look authentic. The movies wiki page says they have done close to 3+ years of pre-production work from 2004 to 2007. But unfortunately I don’t see any of that work showing up in the movie. Anubhav Sinha has clearly shown his inexperience here. I personally felt a genuine good Tamil Movie director should have directed this whole sequence.
Now moving onto Shekhar's son Prateik. Why such a girlish like look to Prateik..? My daughter actually asked me whether he is a boy or a girl..? No explanation!
There is one sequence where Prateik calls his father as Coward. In another sequence Shekhar actually confronts the bad guy Ra-one to save his son. Both these sequences needed lot more punch, some good dialogues and action to showcase father-son relationship and their bonding.
Then comes the owner of the gaming company and his staff. I did not understand why the owner has been shown like a comic character when we are making a serious sci-fi movie. Being a technical company head, we never see him as a serious person, when so much has happened in his company and the gaming characters have actually entered the real life of some one, he is simply selling the same software and looks totally unaware of what is happening.
So problem with first half is lack of emotional punch, continuity in story and poor grooming of characters. We see the movie in bits and pieces which distract the viewer.
When Shekhar dies, the G-One the good character of the computer game comes in to rescue and protect the family. This is where the film actually picks up some space and looks quite promising. There are some really good action sequences here which you would enjoy seeing in a bollywood movie.
But again after the interval, the director loses control and struggles to narrate and take the story forward. The whole second half is a simple computer game with only two characters G-One and Ra-One. There are not many characters to support them and make the story interesting. You might feel you are playing one simple computer game sitting in the theatre.
The pre-climax sequence with Mumbai Local Train is one silver line in the movie. It is done very neatly. The two songs Chammak Challo and Dildaara are good. Acting wise there is no challenge for any one here. Whatever opportunities were there in the movie, they have been wasted. Playing the role of Tamilian Gaming Engineer Shekhar would have been good challenge for Sharukh. But as I already mentioned, he does not seem to be comfortable in that role at all. He looks great in super man role and Chammak Challo song.
Overall the movie does not appeal to you as a single piece, it appears as more of series of events packaged together. There is serious lack of research in the movie. Special effects are good, but not great. Songs are good, but Vishal-Shekhar's music looks little loud in the second half. Cinematography by Nicola and Manikandan (of Tamil movie Ravanan fame) is great. Editing by Sanjay and Martin is decent.
At the end, a strict focus on story, screenplay and narration would have made this movie as one of the best in recent times. A little rigor on the characterization of hero, his son, wife and Ra-one character would have helped a lot. At some point, it seems director has tried too hard to deliver a decent movie and failed because of that.
Because of all these, the hard work of technical crew, singer Akon, brief appearance by Rajini sir and Voice over by Amitabh Bachchan seem to have gone in vain.
This does not mean that Sharukh will lose money in this movie. The producer is a smart business man, he has released 3500 prints across the world. Satellite rights have been already sold. Even if the movie runs in all the theatres for decent one /two weeks, the producer will recover his investment and make good profits.
One last thing, there is an attempt in the end to keep the story open and bring up a sequel to Ra-One. But unless a serious attempt is made to do good research and exercise control on the story, screenplay and narration, I don’t think the sequel is worth producing!
I would give TWO out of FIVE for this movie.