Ra.One & 7-aam Arivu : Two Moronic Techno Monsters!

Ra.One (Hindi)

Shahrukh Khan : A desperado running amok?

After a series of flops, Shahrukh Khan wanted to resurrect his delusional King Khan image which is fast eroding in the highly competitive and creatively combative Bollywood movie-making industry. To settle scores with his falling stars, he initially tried a few directors and finally employed one to make this 3-D movie called as Ra.One, rhyming as Raavan. Shahrukh should have consulted Mani Ratnam to understand the curse behind the name. Unfortunately he didn't. We are therefore subjected to undergo the torture of sitting through the movie, wearing those smudgy stereoscopic glasses, as a form of divine retribution during Diwali by the ghosts of ten-headed Raavan. The film starts in the most boringly possible way ever made in the history of Hindi cinema. And it continues to carry on with the same pace and tedium till the very end. A remarkable three-dimensional feat in wasting technology. Ra-One, G-One, Lucifer, Kickass, HART, Akashi, Aiyo! and Aiyo!! These are not just terms or cliches from any of the kids' computer games. They sum up the entire script and screenplay of the film. During some of the song and dance sequences, one gets to watch the titillating gyrations of Kareena Kapoor with the 3-D effect! That remains the only solace, insufficient though! The entire hyped-up attempt of Shahrukh Khan to create an Indian science fiction superhero film ends up as a creative disaster. Tragic.


Movie Rating : 2 out of 10     

7-aam Arivu (Tamil)

Murugadoss : A mimicry artist aping to become a director!

The Tamil film industry has become creatively challenged ever since the advent of film-makers like S.A.Chandrasekhar's protege Shanmugam Shankar, Balu Mahendra's favourite disciple Bala Palanisamy and S.J.Suryah's assistant Arunsalam Murugadoss. They, along with their cohorts, have collectively set a trend where loud-mouthed propaganda and intellectual mediocrity gets renowned as works of great cinematic endeavour while successfully churning out third-rated trash. Mere technical finesse by coupling brilliant cinematography with a good soundtrack would not make up for good cinema. Which oddly seems to be the case with these crop of younger directors. The latest in the offing from this bunch is 7-aam Arivu by Murugadoss. The first episode of the film begins with a chauvinistically biased portrayal of the story of Bodhidharma, who was a descendant of a Pallava king from Kanchipuram. The historical fact that he was also called as The Blue-Eyed Barbarian in many of the Chinsese texts and the controversies sorrounding his biographial accounts get conveniently buried in the Tamil linguistic zealotry generated in the movie. This part of the film ends with interviews  of many contemporary road-side Tamilians who express their naive ignorance on the subject matter, upon which the director warms up to profoundly explore during the remaining part of the film, the storyline of which is set in present-day Chennai. The hero of the film, who works in a circus, happens to be the descendant of the historical Bodhidharma. The heroine, who is a PhD scholar doing research in genetic enginering, happens to discover the missing link. Her mission : to perform the task of genetic re-engineering on the DNA chain of the hero so that the lost valour, the immense medical knowledge and the vast technological wizardry, which remain hidden in the legendary gentic code of Tamil chromosomes, are rediscovered for the utmost benefit of mankind. To this effect, the heroine delivers an inspiring lecture, interspersed with a few choicest Tamil abuses, which gets unfortunately censored preventing the Delhi Belly effect! Employing his noku-varma technique of marital art, the Chinese villain keeps staring at the camera, thereby looking at the director first and the audience next, benumbing the drained sensibilities and left-over intelligence, to sail through the film. Here, the villain gets transformed into a comedian, which is a staple diet of every Tamil cinema. But such an inventive transformation, no doubt, can be made possible only by a Tamil gene! The grand finale of the film is yet another gutturally repulsive speech delivered by the hero on the greatness of Tamil history, Tamil anthropology, Tamil sociology, Tamil polity, Tamil economy, Tamil geography, Tamil mathematics, Tamil astronomy, Tamil science, etc., etc., the subjects which the director Murugadoss had struggled hard to pass through during his school days! The saving grace of the film are the stellar performance of Surya, the tantalising cinematography of Ravi K Chandran and the enjoyable soundtrack by Harris Jayaraj. Shruti is too plastic in her expressions and too trite for her role. Hope she follows the footsteps of her national award winning Marathi mother rather than falling into the claptrap of her Tamil father. Long live the Tamil chromosomes of the Tamil director so that it can wreck more such Tamil havoc upon the Tamil cinematic future!

Movie Rating : 3 out of 10