Review of Ra-One

I wanted to review Ra-One after we saw it more than a fortnight ago. I took Ads and Y and the 12-year old son  of one of my neighbours (aside: felt very proud to manage 3 kids all by myself!!). This neighbour's son was very enthusiastic about watching the movie and Ads had heard it was a superhero movie and wanted to see it too. Y conveniently sleeps off in most movies (the darkness and for some reason the noise, lulls her to sleep!) so I had no worries about her witnessing any scenes of violence and/or scantily clad females. 

Now here's the thing. I went to see Ra-One a good 2-3 weeks after it's release and after hearing/reading about how bad it was (and really, not a single soul said the movie was even halfway decent), my expectations were understandably very very low. As Ads would say, they were at minus infinity :) So obviously, this frame of mind to a certain extent (but only a teensey-weensy bit) explains why I found the movie to be not bad at all. It was ok. It wasn't bad, it wasn't good. I wouldn't pay the money to go see it again. SRK played out his standard half-dozen expressions. Kareena Kapoor looked hot, as usual. There were the usual foot-thumping songs, the usual melodrama. In fact, it was exactly like any other Hindi movie. So the horrible reviews had me a little puzzled especially as I thought  the SFX were pretty good and classy. The scenes which are supposed to be from inside a gaming console were especially very well-done and realistic (err...I meant game-like). My humble opinion is that everyone has been a tad unfair on panning the movie. I don't think the producers ever claimed they were making a work of cinematic art. Ra-One is in the same genre as Robot (quite as entertaining) and much much better than Krrish. Indeed it is the same genre as the movies that can be clubbed under "mindless summer Hollywood blockbusters". Transformers, Spiderman, Fantastic Four, Superman, anyone?? 

On the same topic, if there was a movie worth watching, go watch Tintin. The animation is just superb! Superb! The performance capture technology is a little surreal because it looks so real (the character's faces do look somewhat more wooden than one might expect). In the middle of the movie, I actually leaned over to S and asked him if they'd changed from animation to real people. It was that good! Also, it's based on my favourite Tintin books and it's a trilogy, so lots to look forward to! But, strictly for Tintin fans, methinks. Ads simply didn't get why amma and appa were so excited :)