Initially i was not going to watch Rajni starer Robot. But after reading today's TOI, i changed my mind. There is an article on front page which starts with - "Why would someone go to a theater at 5am to watch a Rajinikanth movie? Simple — ...because tickets were not available for the 4am show". Very strong start indeed. It went on and on reminding us(not 'telling' as we all know Rajni) how great Rajni is. After reading this article a thought came to my mind that the least thing that he could do is not endorse any consumer product. Cause if he did so then people will blindly buy it, no matter what. I am sure ITC(Indian Tobacco Corporation) must have approached him several times to lobby for them, but i am glad Rajni didnt comply.
Now few words about movie. How is it? well, its up to an individual how he perceives this movie. There are only four characters in the movie -
1.Vasu : Rajni as a brilliant scientist who creates a robo
2.Chetti : Rajni's robo avatar
3.Ash's character : (Please excuse me for forgetting her characters name, but she doesn't do good job to make you remember it) as Vasu's girlfriend
4.Danny's character : (Another forget-me-after-watching-movie performance) vasu's mentor cum bad guy
There are two supporting characters(Vasu's two assistants), who provide some comic relief(One can argue if their presence did more harm than good...). But i will stick to my original opinion that there are only 4 characters, as Ash's character + Danny's character + two comic characters can be treated as just two characters, Ash is that lame.
The story goes something like this - Vasu, being cliched ignorant brilliant scientist, creates a robo. Robo can do anything(1 robo = 100 human). He decides to donate this robo to Indian army. But he couldnt get an approval as Danny is one of the approvers(and as mentioned above he is the bad guy). Danny wants to sell this robo to some terrorists for money, so he uses a trick to 'confuse' Chetti(robo). Now someone might say how can he do that. But remember Danny is Vasu's guru, Vasu's character is played by Rajni and if someone is slightly better than Rajni(i know all of you will disagree with the notion of anyone being better than Rajni) then he also can do anything, even make Robo commit a mistake.
After being thrashed by Danny, Vasu decides to make Chetti perfect. One might wonder how he accomplishes that, the answer is - he decides to give him feeling. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? If you have seen countless robo fiction movies or read any of Issac Asimov novels, you will immediately understand that that is not such a good idea. But Directors love of Robo-cliche doesnt hold him back from doing such a thing that has been done by so many directors, writers before him.
Now Chetti has feeling and i know you would have guessed what a guy would do if he has feeling. Yes, you are right sir, he will fall in love. And this is where Ash comes into the picture. Due to the lack of characters in this movie, Chetti immediately falls madly in love with the only female character in the movie which happens to be Ash. And he does some things for her like helps her cheat in her medical exams, kidnaps a Mosquito who bit her(I swear i am not making this up, he even talks to the Mosquito!!!!), delivers a baby(not hers but of someone else's baby) blah blah blah....
Now what have we got here, there is Vasu who loves Ash and there is Chetti who also loves Ash. Here again the director has expressed his love for cliches by using another, very common formula - Love Triangle. Now, jealous Vasu dissembles Chetti and gets engaged with Ash. Meanwhile other character of this movie, Danny, makes a contract with bad guys to sell them robos for destructive purposes. After failing in several attempts of making his own robo, he retrieves parts of Chetti and makes him good as new, except for a new chip in him(which will make Chetti bad guy so now we will have 1Chetti = 100 bad guys). And here director outdoes himself by using another cliche of converting a good robo into bad one, same as The Terminator.
At this point in the movie Chetti starts making dummy-robos. He creates an army of them. And this is how final battle begins. Army of dummy-bots versus Vasu accompanied by indian police. Then its followed by some cheesy action where dummy-bots meta morphs themselves into different shapes and sizes and kills many, destroys property blah blah blah
In the end Vasu manages to take the chip implanted by Danny out of Chetty and that is the end of bad Chetti. One might think that this is the end. But its not. They file a case against Vasu for the mayhem caused by Chetti. The court gives out a verdict which says human kind is not yet ready for Chetti and he should be dissembled for good. So Chetti(remember now he is a good guy, 1Chetti = humans) takes the responsibility of doing it by himself and while doing so he delivers some of the most cheesiest totally predictable dialogs of history of cinema.
Phew, the movie ends. But i really wonder if Ash's character starts practicing medicine she would kill more humans than Chetti did throughout the movie, considering the fact that she cheated in her medical exams and one other small thing - she is downright STUPID.
P.S. :
The moment i entered the cinema hall i regretted my decision. But it was too late by then. And this damn movie made me so sad(i was sad and not angry as i was way past anger after first half an hour) that i decided to deride this... crap publicly. This is my first ever written movie review. The more i wrote about Robot the more i remembered how much waste of a time this movie was in the first place. It compelled me to write even more bad things about this movie. And the things that i have written above are not even half of it. I wanted to write even more things. But i though it would be too lengthy and wont be will accepted.
For example i didnt comment on Rajni's legendary fighting skills. While we are on the subject, i did not under stand why did they turn Rajni into a Robo to do such humanly impossible stunts? I mean, given Rajni's reputation, he could have done all of his stunts(including removing his own head and creating his own army and many more things like that) being a normal human being. Here the 'normal' adjective is redefined for Rajni, as Rajni is superhuman(i almost said abnormal....) so his 'normal' is way different than normal normal.
I also left out the part about the songs. I am against translating the songs word to word from one language to another keeping the music same. It just doenst work. I mean if particular words with particular rhythm in one language is unique thing. You cannot just translate the words without disturbing the rhythm. The same thing can be said for the songs from movie 'Hum se hai Muquabala'. Do you know the lyric of the songs? Both Urwashi and the title song have great music(thanx to AR Rehman) but the meaning of the words is simply unbearable. After saying these things its needless to say that all the songs from this movie sucked real bad. I couldnt remember a single song after the movie was over. I couldnt even tell the song that was being played in the cinema hall was in Hindi or not.
