Ra.One

Indian Express Rating: **

Can a film which boasts some of the most stunning special effects seen in an Indian venture,and a couple of Bollywood’s most jiggly,shapely navels—one male,the other female,one pierced,one not but oh-so-hot—be a slurry sludge? ‘Ra.One’ goes one better. It is a superstarry slurry sludge,with just the occasional consolatory sparkle.

Shah Rukh Khan’s shout-out to superheroes is a Three Part Something : borrowing from past superhero outings,imbuing them with a worn mix of action-tragedy-comedy-romance,and flattening them into a slack plot which seldom manages to escape the clutches of clichéd story-telling.

Young Prateek (Verma) wishes his ‘appa’ were the kind of cool dad every kid wants. But Shekhar Subramanium (Khan) is the kind of Tamilian who eats ‘dahi’-over-spaghetti with his fingers,and breaks into exasperated ‘aiyyos’ while his son and wife (Kapoor) look on,hoping one day he will show them all. And he does,while creating a video game in which the bad guy is the all powerful Ra.One (Rampal). And the only one who can best him is G.One : death-dealer Raavan vs life-giving Jeevan.

A Frankenstein-come-to life is usually a great movie idea. It gives a film an easy-to-grasp good vs evil graph. Given all the bells and whistles a video game comes with,Ra.One could have been a clear winner amongst kids who seem to be born with a gaming remote attached to a forelimb. Or the parents of aforementioned kids,equally batty about such games.

It’s not just Shekhar-the-appa who is lame. The whole film seems to be dipped in the stop-start-go stutter of an overlong video game. As the bumbling Tamilian techie,Shekhar is single-tone; G.One seems to be a confused creature,‘made-of-metal but-with-emotions’. And curiosity. He demonstrates this by asking Kapoor : what is Karvachauth? Got it,this is a Bollywood robot. The sfx is wonderful in parts but mostly derivative,with Shah Rukh mouthing such iconic lines like ‘I will be back’ (oh Arnie,my Arnie),and clutching a pole on top of a high building,like..? Spidey. That’s right. Go to the top of the class.

There are also some really alarming lapses in taste for a film that’s aimed at the young ones : bad girls whose names end with Lee ( Iski Lee,Uski Lee,Sabki Lee). Kapoor makes for a very swish looking mom who mouths cheap invective in the name of smartness. And there’s a scene in which SRK’s nipples and genitals send a fellow into orgasmic delight. ‘Condom condom’ for ‘kojum konjum’ is maybe borderline amusing,but ‘bhai ka bhochada’? Or words to that effect? Tsk,Mr Sinha. Or should that be Mr Khan?

At this stage,Shah Rukh can be deemed likeable even when he is busy thrusting his pelvis at us (which he does,most assiduously,in a scene meant to be funny). But neither of his avatars are fully realized,and that’s the real trouble with this film,fashioned fully around his star persona. Kareena is drop dead gorgeous,and that seems to be her only job description,to be the most ‘chammak-est’ of ‘challo-s’. I felt like reaching out with a pair of shears and giving the tyke a good cut : whoever thought of that hair? When Rajinikanth arrives in and as himself in a tiny cameo,Ra.One segues into a cheesy tribute to Chitti : the sfx here is miles ahead of what we saw in ‘Enthiran’,but there’s just not enough fun. And not enough villain : poor Rampal gets about the last twenty minutes of the film. More Ra.Gone than Ra.One.

shubhra.gupta@expressindia.com