Friday, October 28, 2011

Ra One Movie Review-Mistakes, Should I Watch Ra One?

Ra One has opened to mixed reactions, there are some who are praising the movie to the skies while the others feel that it is a big let-down. The funny part is that some die-hard SRK fans felt Ra. One was disappointing and the actor's critics liked it. Anyway here are the mistakes of Ra. One that we cannot digest:


1. Shah Rukh Khan adopts a casual stance for the 'Shekhar' character and takes the Tamil accent for granted. Sometmes, he says 'Rumba', at other times 'Ramba' for 'Romba'. And when the moment of crisis arrives, his accent disappears.

2. The logic of Ra One is twisted, if not flawed. One cannot fathom how the computer program starts thinking for itself even during the developmental phase. At the same time, this uniquely complicated game is so basic, that even a school kid can develop it from the scratch? (referring to the last part of the movie)

3. An exasperated Kareena Kapoor wants to know how can a game become real and take the form of a real person. Her son (Armaan Verma) calms her down saying that he will explain later. He never does.... That's Ra. One for you.

4. The writing is shoddy and instead of focusing on the game and its skillful precision to track down Lucifer, the three writers of the movie just focus on making it a Shah Rukh Khan spectacle. How did Arjun Rampal (Ra One) get the passport to travel to India to search for G.One? Now that is a colossal error.

5. There are a lot of paradoxical elements in the film, on one hand you call it a children's film and then you have Kareena Kapoor writing a thesis on profanity, the child making repeated condom jokes, low brow humor, gay scenes and Kareena Kapoor boob press scene. Then they introduce a Karva-chauth scene; talk about Indianizing a super-hero movie! In short, the movie does not stick to its plot/

6, You can feel that there is a conflict in the vision of the director and the producer. At one point of time, they seem to be contradicting each other.

7. Who is a superhero? He is the one who connects with the audience, who saves everyone in the world and their dog. But here, the whole thing is about G.One trying to save his family from Ra One. Who gives a damn? The audience does not feel any sense of urgency or motivation, they are just passive to the turn of events. The villain in a superhero movie is the one who knows the weakness of the superhero and uses it to his advantage We do not see that in Ra One.

8. The superhero also does not have special power and all Ra One and G One do is throw laser beams at each other, as a form of combat. Quite amateurish, must say.

9.. The start and the end of a movie means a lot when it comes to the impact, more so in a superhero film. See the best superhero films like Spiderman, Terminator series or Iron Man. Here the starting scene just rode on star power of Priyanka Chopra and Sanjay Dutt, it was intentionally comical but many were not laughing. The climax was no great shakes either. Compare that to Robot's noisy but jaw dropping climax.

10. Apart from the 9 different types of hammering that I have done for Ra One, I still acknowledge the fact that Shah Rukh Khan took a risk with the film, and a huge financial one at that. He could have made any romantic movie that viewers can easily relish and made lot of easy moolah as if the project was on auto-pilot. But he still what he felt like, even though the outcome is far from satisfactory.



10 comments:

Ashia said...

I am not Indian. So the Tamil thing did not bother me. But I can clarify few of the doubts you have here

2nd: When the game is released in front of audiences Srk explains to Prateek that his team made sure to insert artificial intelligence program inside Ra One and G One so they can learn to create new moves for fights every time. Prateek is shown as 14 years old growing up in the western society. At that age, in United States, many kids learn to create video games. Some can even modify existing ones. Just google columbine high school massacre and you will know about two most notorious teens who used to modify the game called Doom.

4th: One, Arjun flies kingfisher plane himself. That’s why the airport people find the entire landing of the plane quite confusing and tries to get in touch with its pilot. The scene was there.

5th: Its definitely not children’s movie. I am not sure if Srk mentioned that in his promos.

6th: Blame the editor. After watching the last song, I understood many many scenes were cut from the movie. My sis also told me that a huge amount of Suresh Menon’s scenes were also deleted.

7th: Goswami sends G One to save Shakher’s family. It is implied.

8th: They can fight physically with each other. Also both are given the power to control minds. While Ra one does it for evil reasons, G One does it for good reasons.

9th: Climax was based on cheating in the game. Just like Fuzion Frenzy and some other games, Ra One’s levels were timed. The kid, that’s why, asks G One to keep killing time by saving himself from Ra One. Unfortunately, G One doesn’t get it and keeps getting his lifeline lowered through fights. Eventually, “the main part” thing works to kill the last few minutes in the game, allowing G One to reach the last level. Ra One was programmed to be evil. He can’t, of course, change that about himself. Before he was in search of Lucifer, but later his heart which contains his real power becomes the most important thing for him. Ra One does see Prateek as G One’s weakness. That’s why, he kidnaps the boy.

The movie is a masterpiece. But since it’s a sci fi movie just from one look it’s not possible to understand its every aspect. I actually watched it second time and fell in love with it. I am gonna watch it again next week. All science fiction movies are not free of indirect signals and flaws. In terminator part 3, Arnold’s wrinkles were all too visible. I don’t think a robot can have that many of wrinkles on his face. Overall, he went through makeup blooper. Meanwhile, in Independence Day, they show guards in black uniforms guarding area 51 in Nevada. This was an utter nonsense considering the fact that in that state the temperature is always over 100 degree. Just go to the site called moviemistakes you will find there little posts on Hollywood sci fi movies flaws.

A Hollywood movie is coming out next year in May. It has Ra One’s concept. We watched the trailer today. Trust me, Ra One looks far superior than that one in every way.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Ashia for your contribution, nice points put forwards there..

Arshia said...

No problem. I am actually quite glad to see the writer here asking these questions. I read various reviews of Ra One done by Indian professional critics. It seems that their own fault of skipping the details shown in the movie was blamed on Srk. Some even wrote misguiding reviews. One mentioned that the idea of Ra One video game was Shakher's. But the truth is that it was Prateek's. Others were trying to find reality in the movie. Unfortunately, reality and sci fi movies don't go hand in hand. The worst of all reviewers was Raja Sen who seemed to have watched the movie only after fantasizing its story. When he found out that it was all in his head he trashed the movie.

Anonymous said...

Does Raja Sen ever like a film? Ne should be called Raja insane, just makes a blatant show of vocabulary, he goes to watch movies with a preconceived notion..

Anonymous said...

So many mistakes in this movie.

They show western Cristian type funeral and later ash being thrown in water.

They show Karva Chauth festival before Dussehra.

Senseless movie.

Rajesh said...

yes your are right nice post thanks

Anonymous said...

TWO biggest Mistakes...

2. Karvachauth came before Dussehra... This can never happen.....

1. The biggest mistake - Wen Shahrukh died, he was buried but on reaching India Kareena is seen depositing his ashes in Ganga.. From where did the ashes come from if he was buried and not burned.....

Analysis said...

I found this movie very very very ..... boring. I did not expect that type of plot in movie. So upset lost of money and time with watching RA-one. Super flop

Anonymous said...

I really loved this movie.
I found two mistakes,

1. Just before Prateek started playing the game at the launch party, he says "zip it crab face" the game screen shows that he is in LEVEL 2..

2.And at the end of the song "Criminal" Akaashi comes and pauses the game. Checkit, just before he paused the game Ra.One's health was almost nil, but just after the pause when the game screen is shown again, Ra.One's health had increased.

Anonymous said...

Nicely done Ashia. I've seen my share of superhero movies and this is right up there with them. I was particularly amazed that they were able to so cleverly get the musical numbers into a sueprhero movie. It's not perfect (though really none are. Seriously, as much as I love Spiderman, it's a bit hard to believe that a guy can be bitten by a radioactive spider and have his genes altered overnight and in the way they were. That didn't stop me from loving the movie. It's called suspension of disbelief) but it's a highly impressive effort. The music was great, the sound was great, the cast did a great job. I saw it seven times. :)

Anonymous, for your points, I could be wrong, but I think they only showed Shekher in the coffin so that they could have a wake. My father was cremeted but we had a wake so we had to have a coffin. Then I guess either the coffin was cremeted with him, or they discard the coffin. But I think they were spreading the ashes in that pond on the family's property cause they hadn't left for India at that point (and how heartbreaking was that when Prateek didn't want to let go of the ashes?). I don't remember them putting ashes in the Ganges after they returned to India, but it's possible that was in a different version from the one I saw in America.

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