Filmi Geek

Band baaja baaraat (2010)

बैंड बाजा बारात

Dir. Maneesh Sharma

It isn't often that a new film makes me wonder how it will be remembered in 30 years.  Even most good movies are looked back on with affectionate nostalgia; only a few attain the status of classics, elevated in memory to a cultural touchstone, something more than a nice way to spend a few hours. Before you decide that I have lost my mind: I am not quite ready to say that Band baaja baaraat ("band, fanfare, wedding procession") is such a movie, though it is delightful and extremely well-wrought.  Yet, just like the business created by its protagonists, Band baaja baaraat is a synergy, more than the sum of its parts -  enough so to make me wonder whether more might be going on here than just the best-made love story of the past few years.

Shruti Kakkad (Anushka Sharma) is a young woman with a plan.  Fresh from college, she has a vision of building the biggest wedding planning business in the country, and is not afraid to work for it.  Her classmate, Bittoo Sharma (Ranveer Singh), talks Shruti into a business partnership, if only to buy some time before his father drags him away from the excitement of Delhi, and back to the family farm.  Shruti and Bittoo take to the work like demons, putting in long hours together and working their way up from small celebrations in dingy chawls to the grand prize of wedding planning - giant, multi-day, estate home affairs.  Their style is unique, colorful, and fun, and their business - Shaadi Mubarak - has arrived.  But the growing attraction between Shruti and Bittoo sours the laddoo; Shruti's rules of business don't leave any room for passion, and Bittoo sees himself too much the gadabout to let love tie him down.  Shaadi Mubarak bends and breaks under the strain, and each of the partners tries, unsuccessfully, to carry on the business alone.  It is going to take near-divine intervention to get Shaadi Mubarak - not to mention Bittoo and Shruti - back on the right track.

Band baaja baaraat is, most importantly, a ton of fun, well-paced and colorful - and cleverly constructed with built-in excuses for multiple wedding songs without turning the movie into Hum aapke hain koun.  It is a cute, shiny entertainer - accessible, charming, and funny, and blessed with lots of terrific music.  Shaadi Mubarak's signature style is described in the movie with the words "chatak" and "dhinchyak" - both rendered in the subtitles as "kitsch" - which lend the whole film a wonderful shimmering color and energy that is exactly what makes this kind of Bollywood movie so immersive and fun.   

But for all of that delicious sparkle, Band baaja baaraat is also a lot richer and more character-driven than most love stories.  It isn't just two hours of stalling to see how the principals find their way to each other; there is a strong character arc for each of them, a process of maturation that is very satisfying to watch.  The movie gives them a few lucky breaks - the one that brings Shaadi Mubarak back together after the rift, in particular, is a little too far on the deus ex machina side of things - but it also never shies away from showing just how much hard work Shruti and Bittoo pour into their business. 

As a modern, independent young heroine, Shruti is even better than Jab We Met's Geet, strong-willed without being reactionary, visionary without being flighty.  She is far from flawless - she has eye rolling down to an art form, and it is clear from the beginning that she will need to develop some flexibility and a sense of humor before movie's end.  But develop she does - her speech to Bittoo in the movie's climax nearly made me stand up and cheer - how refreshing to see a young woman in a movie, after suffering a heartbreak, dust herself off and prepare to get on with her life!  And at the resolution, she accepts him without compromising her strength, noting that "uske tang tod dungi, partership nahin" ("I'll break his legs, but I won't break the partnership").   

The movie's excellent handling of the sexual facet of Bittoo and Shruti's relationship is refreshing, poignant, and thoroughly relatable.  It is not sex itself that throws a wrench in Bittoo and Shruti's works; it is their failure to honestly acknowledge and communicate their feelings about it and about each other.  Band baaja baaraat does not have even the scent of a morality tale, in which young people's ambitions are driven off the rails by sex.  No one's life is ruined by sex - in particular, Shruti's life is not ruined.  The message here is only that one should be as mature and forthright about matters of the heart as one is about matters of business - but in neither sphere is it necessarily a bad thing for a woman to be aggressive about getting what she wants.  

With all that richness in Shruti's character arc, Band baaja baaraat would have been a good movie even if Bittoo were merely a cipher or a foil for her development, but he too gets a satisfying character progression.  He starts the movie as a bit of a feckless loser with more strut than substance, and a capacity for lying under pressure that, one feels, will cause him more trouble than it gets him out of.  But Shruti's steadying influence puts his natural (if rough) charm and fast-talking ability to its best possible use, and there is much delight in watching Bittoo coming to understand how he needs her.  

As such a character-driven movie, Band baaja baaraat asks much more of Ranveer Singh and Anushka Sharma - a newcomer and a near-newcomer - than most light romances demand of their young stars, and part of what makes it so good is that the two of them are more than up to the task.  And that is where I start to think about where Band Baaja baaraat will end up after a few more decades of filmi history.  There is something about its electric young jodi that reminds me of the thrill with which folks remember star-launching romances like Bobby or Qayamat se qayamat tak.  As a work of filmmaking craft, Band baaja baaraat is far better than either of those.  But even as the decorations get taken down and the bleat of horns fades into the distance, the question lingers: are Anushka Sharma and Ranveer Singh a nascent powerhouse jodi? 

And  beyond just the power of the pairing, Band baaja baarat offers a bold, empowering, reflection of the industrious, young population of urban India - it's like Rocket Singh with sex and without the questionable business practices. (It's no small matter that Shruti is explicit in her conviction that Shaadi Mubarak distinguish itself from the prevailing wedding-planning practice of cheating customers.  Band baaja baaraat strives to show an alternative path to success besides beating the establishment at its own game.)  The segment of middle-class society portrayed so positively in Band baaja baaraat is, in no small part, the folks  who get to decide which of today's movies are tomorrow's classics.  So, does this movie capture a watershed moment in the development of the Republic?  That is a grand and heavy load for a light, comedic romance to carry.  If any movie can shoulder that load, though, Band baaja baaraat is it.

 

The Broadway-Bollywood Exchange, or Bhoot Meets Phantom

I have a friend who loves Broadway musicals as much as I love Hindi movies. 

One day over lunch, not too long ago, we were comparing notes about our respective passions.  It occurred to me that the two forms have a great deal in common.   Both have musical production numbers, of course, but also melodrama, archetypes and allegory, big emotions, and - so compelling to both my friend and myself - chest-heaving heroines succumbing to passion against their better judgment.

An idea took shape as we talked, a sort of  "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" exchange - we planned a day where we would get together and watch both a Broadway show and a Hindi movie.

I asked around the internet filmi communities for recommendations for a film to show her - surely there were legions of people who were fans of both forms and would be full of ideas about what films had Broadway-crossover appeal. But there wasn't much response.  The few suggestions I got were not markedly different from suggestions commonly made for introducing any newcomer to Hindi films. And only one person I found was herself a Broadway fan.

That lone Broadway fan made an interesting remark.  "You would think there would be all kinds of crossover appeal," she said, but in fact there doesn't seem to be.  Her own attempts to introduce her theater friends to Hindi movies were received well enough, but did not take root and create new Bollywood fans.

And so, when the day came for me and my friend and our Broadway-Bollywood exchange, I went in with the spirit of an anthropologist exploring the differences between two cultures.   I wanted to know why the commonalities weren't strong enough to create a common fandom.   What would I find lacking in Broadway?  What would put her off about Bollywood?  I tried to keep an open mind and also to put no pressure on my friend - I promised myself I wouldn't be defensive if she didn't like what she saw. 

My friend chose a recording of a Royal Albert Hall staging of Phantom of the Opera, starring her crush-du-jour, Sierra Boggess.  (Going to a live performance would have been ideal, but also expensive - this production of Phantom was a reasonable second choice.) 

I am not going to judge the appeal (or lack thereof) of modern Broadway productions based upon this one show.  Phantom of the Opera is a show with many warts - its score is bombastic and dated, its book somewhat lacking in substance.  Its heroine, Christine, is a simpering thing, and she doesn't get much to do beyond look fetching and sing at the command of various men, often against her will.   In that, though, she is not that much different from many filmi heroines!  Though, it would have been nice to see some defiance in her reluctant performance of the Phantom's composition, like Basanti's command performance for Gabbar Singh.  What she does show is not exactly defiance:

 

*cough* 

In another notable parallel to the traditions of Hindi movies, certain songs serve as a thinly-veiled substitute for sex scenes; the climax of "Music of the Night" is quite clearly just that, as the Phantom repeatedly cries "Sing!" while Christine squeals out ever higher, louder, and more ecstatic notes.  "Well, that wasn't the least bit orgasmic, not at all," I commented to my friend.  ETA: My friend informs me that I have my songs mixed up.  What I have described here is the climax of the show's title song. "It's the lead-in to 'Music of the Night'," she tells me, "which is post-coital." 

For what it's worth, while Phantom will never be my favorite show, it offers plenty to impress.   The staging is large and spectacular, with a few grand production numbers and even a little bit of dancing.  The most fun choreography comes not in a dance production, but in bustling scenes where characters glide around the stage in a delightful kind of orchestrated chaos.  And the pure talent and ability of the performers is nothing short of stunning - it's unbelievable that they execute near-flawless live performances show after show, day after day.

After the curtain came down on Phantom of the Opera, it was Bollywood's turn.  I had deliberated for weeks to choose a movie for this event; it's always hard to pick one movie to do all the heavy lifting, to be the sole representative of a vast, diverse century of Hindi cinema.  I settled on Paheli, a movie that I love for its style and color - especially since my trip to Rajasthan - and its delightful songs.  I love it also for Rani Mukherjee, who perhaps isn't to me quite what Sierra Boggess is to my friend, but is thoroughly delicious nonetheless.  (I wanted to showcase my own crush-du-jour, Vidya Balan, but I didn't have a suitable newcomer's movie on hand.)  I also love that Rani's character in Paheli makes a bold assertion of her sexuality, choosing with fully informed consent to get it on with the bhoot instead of enduring five celibate years of her husband's absence.  She is a much more willful and substantial heroine, and much less an ingenue, than Christine.

The first thing my friend noticed (after I apologized profusely during Eros's interminable, unskippable promos) was that unlike Broadway, the actors don't do their own singing.  (My friend has a good ear; Paheli's opening song, "Minnat kare",  is sung by Shreya Ghoshal only, but lines are picturized on several different women.)  I think this was a bit of a disappointment to my friend; when I probed her afterward, she said that a good part of the appeal of Broadway to her is the spectrum of talent of the performers, and the pure awesomeness of the live performance I mentioned above.  I have heard others make this complaint about Hindi films, and I admit it somewhat puzzles me; I have no problem with the division of labor, letting the actors act and the singers sing.  But, it's a problem inherent to comparisons across media - while Broadway and Bollywood do have some elements in common, there are some inherent differences between movies and live shows - different constraints and different advantages to each - and if a person prefers one over the other, de gustibus non disputandum.

 

At any rate, while my friend didn't offer much commentary during the screening of Paheli - and I didn't press her for any while she was watching - she was rapt throughout, which was good enough for me.  (She especially enjoyed the peanut gallery of puppets with their running commentary on the proceedings.)    The verdict is the best I could have hoped for - she wants to do it again.  Next time, I think I'll show her Lagaan.   She is a serious fan of football (the American kind), and so I think she'll get a kick out of the cricket and appreciate the sports-movie arc of the film.  Also, being accustomed to the broad strokes and playing-to-the-cheap-seats acting style of Broadway shows, she is less likely than the average westerner to be put off by some of the more unsubtle characterizations in that movie, such as Captain Russell's mustache-twirling villainry.   ("I'm not afraid of cheese," she said to me at one point, "I like cheese."  She is most definitely Bollywood-ready.)  Or maybe I'll go classic, and risk Chalti ka naam gaadi - that has the advantage of a tasty helping of Madhubala, along with Kishore Kumar singing his own songs.

Whatever we choose, the anthropological study will continue, and we'll see whether, at least in our two cases, a Broadway fan can become a Bollywood lover and vice versa.  It's a bit of an unfair arrangement, for now, as DVDs of live stagings are not easy to come by, so she can't show me her favorites as easily as I can show her mine.  I would love to see a live show with her - maybe next summer, when a production of Wicked comes to our city, we will make that happen.  In the meantime, we'll make do with what she has on hand.  And, I'll keep you posted.

 

Kaala patthar (1979)

काला पत्थर

Dir. Yash Chopra

I have not yet seen every Salim-Javed movie, but I have seen a lot of them, more than enough to know just how good the duo is at telling riveting stories with a flawless balance of all the requisite masala elements.  Kaala patthar ("black rock") is no exception, with superb drama, heart-melting romance, and moving arcs of redemption.  This is one movie - yet another - that I wonder why I waited so long to watch, and immediately watched twice more. 

The Dhanraj coal mine is a dangerous place, beset by accidents that all too frequently cost workers their lives.  But it is also a profitable place, and its owner, Dhanraj Puri (Prem Chopra), minces no words in explaining that he values the coal more than the people who dig it out for him at such risk.  His earnest new engineer, Ravi Malhotra (Shashi Kapoor), discovers that one of the active mine tunnels is dangerously close to flooding, but Dhanraj callously dismisses his concerns and insists that the men keep digging.  Ravi enlists the help of a brassy young reporter, Anita (Parveen Babi), who writes an exposé on the terrible conditions in the mine.  He also earns the trust of Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan), a troubled mine worker whose fearless drive to heroism makes him both friends and enemies - including Mangal (Shatrughan Sinha), an escaped convict who struts arrogantly into the mining town.  Meanwhile, Vijay finds solace for his restless, guilt-wracked psyche in the company of the mine's idealistic doctor, Sudha Sen (Rakhee).  And Channo (Neetu Singh), a local girl who sells good-luck trinkets, must decide between turning Mangal into the police, or falling in love with him.

There is much going on in this multi-starrer to which that facile plot summary cannot do justice.  Salim-Javed's evocative dialogues add a deftly poetic touch that make the moving scenes even more so.  One of the best is naive Sudha Sen's introduction to the reality of the mine hospital, presented to her by the outgoing doctor (Sanjeev Kumar in a wonderful cameo).  "Is hospital mein mariz nahin," he laments, "laashein aati hain - voh laashein jo abhi puri tarah mari nahin hain."  ("There are no patients in this hospital, just corpses - corpses that are not yet fully dead.")  Sanjeev Kumar is one of my favorite actors at any rate, and his pained resignation in this small scene is just magnificently rendered.  In another standout scene - too lengthy for me to reproduce the dialogue here - Vijay and Sudha discuss the nature of dreams, and why the lost souls of the mining town so willingly pony up their hard-earned rupees for Channo's baubles.  These touching scenes provide a perfect counterpoint to balance Kaala patthar's generous offerings of improbable, classic-style dishum-dishum. 

Yash Chopra's visuals, too, are often arresting and symbolically loaded.  Even the obvious visual cues, like the contrast between the grime of the coal miners on the one hand and Dhanraj's crisp suits and shiny cars on the other, are skillfully rendered and add texture to the story.  Vijay, of course, appears in his first scene smeared with even more sweat and coal dust than his peers, suggesting at the very start that he throws himself into his work with a vigor and aggression that boils up from the depths of his character.  The scenes of the mine's operations are also rich and compelling.  The film opens with wide shots of the mine's ground-level works, enormous machines shuttling and processing mountains of coal while endless lines of grimy, exhausted men file into and out of the mine's mouth.  These operations shots, reminding me of the fascinating steel-mill sequences that open Shyam Benegal's Kalyug, set the scene with a powerful evocation of the grit and heat of coal-mine labor.  Another beautiful wide shot later in the film - one of the few that shows women working the mines too - sharply contrasts the women's colorful rural dress against the slate-grey of the ground they toil on and the deep black of the coal they carry on their heads. 

 

(Click the image for a full-size look.)  Even the background score - not something I am usually particularly clued into as a movie-viewer - adds both depth and levity as needed.  In one excellent sequence early in the movie, a resonant long note in the score melts seamlessly into the call of the mine's emergency klaxon, a sound heard altogether too often by the beleaguered miners.  (In that scene, the miners bolt energetically to the scene of the accident; later, they seem to drag themselves sullenly, with a resigned, "what is it this time" affect.)

Kaala patthar's three romantic threads span the full spectrum of masala pyaar.  Anita and Ravi's courtship is jaunty and light; their banter provides the closest thing Kaala patthar offers to a comic side plot.  (Like Salim-Javed's outstanding Deewaar, Kaala patthar has too much substantial story to tell to waste very much time on tension-breaking digressions.)   Channo and Mangal's romance is somewhat shallowly motivated, the standard-issue filmi trope in which Channo's affections bloom after Mangal saves her from a pack of would-be rapists.  But the facility of that is more than made up for by Vijay and Sudha's arc, which unfolds delicately and cerebrally.   Sudha responds subtly and nonverbally to hints that Vijay is not what he appears to be - an outburst in perfectly cultured English, for example, that signals his educated, upper-class background.  And it is genuinely moving as Vijay begins to make himself vulnerable to her, finally telling the story that haunts his disturbed sleep and allowing her to see "mere dil mein kamra ... jis mein main khud bhi nahin jaata"  ("the place in my heart where I my myself don't even go").

I have already run out of space without mentioning so much else that makes Kaala patthar rich enough to reward multiple viewings -  a super supporting cast, some terrific songs, Ravi's shiny moral certitude, Channo's slight tinge  of melancholy even when she is providing naach-gaana and cheerfulness to everyone in the mining town.   Instead of gushing further, I think I'll go watch it again, and recommend that you do the same. 

 

 

Iqbal (2005)

इक़्बाल

Dir. Nagesh Kukunoor

I have said this before, but I have a soft spot for sports movies.  Even if the drama is a little manufactured, the conclusion foreordained, a well-made sports movie can still generate the right frisson, the little thrill of shared victory that sports allows the folks in the stands to share with the athletes on the field.  And so, I had high expectations for Nagesh Kukunoor's Iqbal, a sports movie with the additional benefits of a village setting and appealing, talented cast.   With that hat trick going for it, I thought Iqbal would surely be an instant favorite.  For reasons I still can't pin down even as I write, though, this movie misses the mark.

Iqbal (Shreyas Talpade) is a deaf-mute young man, a farmer's son with big dreams.  He inherited a passion for cricket from his mother (Prateeksha Lonkar), and spends long afternoons in the countryside setting up wickets and bowling them down with impressive precision.  With the help of his hearing little sister Khadija (Shweta Prasad), Iqbal earns a tryout at a nearby swanky cricket academy led by a famous teacher known just as Guruji (Girish Karnad).  He is soon ejected from the academy to appease a jealous and egotistical boy whose rich father's wallet holds more influence with the academy than Iqbal's talent - the naive Iqbal first unpleasant lesson about what really drives the machinery of competitive-class cricket, but not his last.  Almost at the end of hope, Iqbal discovers that the village drunk, Mohit (Naseeruddin Shah), was a star bowler in his youth, and he prevails on the reluctant man to coach him.  Mohit's training - and his personal influence - earn Iqbal an opportunity with the Andhra Pradesh state team.  But Iqbal has more than deafness and lack of formal training to overcome.  His father (Yatin Karyekar) is dead set against cricket, and wants Iqbal working the farm by his side.  And Guruji, too, has machinations of his own in the works. 

I am puzzled as to why this movie does not fire on all cylinders for me. It is not the performances, which are all fine and fairly natural.  As the mute Iqbal, Shreyas Talpade is as sweet and likable as he ever is.  Iqbal has no dialogue, and so Talpade must rely on other forms of expression to convey his character's central dilemma, the conflict between his dreamy nature on the one hand, and his love for his father and sense of responsibility to his family on the other.  Talpade is more than up to this challenge.  Naseeruddin Shah, in contrast, is not challenged at all as the wisecracking drunken has-been Mohit, who dries up in a hurry when Iqbal needs him to.   But even if it is not his most nuanced performance ever, Shah is appealing enough.  The best performances are from Prateeksha Lonkar and Yatin Karyekar as Iqbal's parents; Karyekar is especially compelling, offering a combination of tenderness and sternness that is believable and sympathetic.

Iqbal also offers a pleasing window onto village life, the kind that I usually enjoy.   Iqbal's father is a hardworking farmer, always at risk of losing his property.  But he wants better for his children, and the way he runs his family suggests a dream of upward mobility that is very engaging.  Iqbal's sister Khadija is studious and book-hungry, and she seems thoroughly encouraged in these pursuits.   As for Iqbal, when he is not practicing his bowling technique, he tends the family's buffaloes, whom he has named for national-team bowlers (including his favorite, Kapil Dev, who makes a cameo appearance late in the movie).  The scenes in which Iqbal leads the buffaloes to pasture and sets up his practice pitch provide Kukunoor many opportunities for picturesque landscape shots full of billowing meadows and rakish palm trees.

Despite its strengths, though, Iqbal remains a fairly by-the-book sports movie - dream, obstacle, glimmer of hope, training montage, setback, more training montage, more hope, more setback, improbable last-minute turnaround victory.  All of this is fine if it is well-executed, but the sports aspect of Iqbal is, unfortunately, one of its weaker aspects.  The movie does not provide a great sense of cricket as a team sport, partly due to Iqbal's isolated, outsider status, but also because in the story's arc, the rest of his team simply doesn't matter.  The result is that the sports arc of Iqbal packs less punch than that of Dil bole hadippa, Chak de India, or Lagaan - each of those, in its own way, offers a larger context for the big game than a single character's apotheosis.

And then there is the question of why Iqbal is deaf and mute.  In fretting to understand what this element adds to the movie, I have come up with several theories, some narrative and others symbolic.  Perhaps it is meant to augment Iqbal's isolation, providing a coccoon for his focused pursuit of his dream.  Or, maybe it's presented as a quotidian aspect of village life - such disabilities are perhaps more common in communities where quality medical care for childhood diseases is wanting.  In this reading, Iqbal's deafness is just another aspect of who he is, shown in the same way is shown to be Muslim - not to make a point, just to add color to the movie's tapestry.  Perhaps his deafness is a device to increase the odds against him - but if so, the movie drops this thread very abrubtly when Iqbal joins the Andhra team, as there is not even lip service paid to any communication problems with his coach or teammates there.  None of these readings is very satisfying - they read like post-hoc attempts to justify a story element that ultimately feels tacked-on, a cheap ploy for sympathy that is brushed aside when it is no longer expedient. 

This spotty handling of Iqbal's deafness perhaps gets to the heart of why Iqbal is merely a nice movie and not a superb one.   The movie suffers from a bit of tone confusion - the filmi facets of Iqbal's deafness clash against the delicate, arty portrayal of his family life, and the gears don't quite mesh.   It's a sweet movie, a nice try, and has a lot that makes it worth watching.  But I can't help feeling that it's just not as good as it could have been.  It has a good solid innings, but it doesn't quite hit a century.

 

Ra.One (2011)

Dir. Anubhav Sinha

I admit that a tiny screen on an airplane is no way to watch a movie that, if it is respected for anything, is respected for special effects.  But flashy stunts and explosions, unbacked by compelling story or characters, cannot save an otherwise terrible movie.  And Ra.One is nothing if not a terrible movie. 

Shekhar (Shah Rukh Khan) is an earnest, nerdy video-game designer.   Desperate to please his son Prateek (Armaan Verma), an 11-year-old with an overdeveloped sense of cool, Shekhar designs a game in which the villain is more powerful than the hero.  Prateek is duly impressed, both with the game's awesome villain, Ra.One, and the nifty full-body virtual reality suit he has to don to play the game.  Soon, though, Ra.One comes to life, breaking out of the game and killing both Shekhar and his colleague Akashi (Tom Wu) - and hell-bent on Prateek.  The only way to save the boy and his mother, Soniya (Kareena Kapoor), is to bring the game's hero, G.One (also Shah Rukh Khan) to life to take on Ra.One in his most powerful form (Arjun Rampal).

If that summary sounds thin, it's because the story is thinner than onion skin, unburdened by any nuance or substance.  There is more plot device than coherent explanation involved in bringing the game's characters to life.  That would be forgivable if the characters had any character, but for the most part, they do not.  Unlike most better superhero movies, there is no backstory to drive either the hero G.One or the villain Ra.One.  They are "good" and "bad", respectively, only because the movie declares them to be so.  There is an attempt at a message in the half-baked, confusing plot device called a HART - I can't remember what the acronym stands for - that both Ra.One and G.One rely upon for their life force, or something.  This yields some watery symbolic nonsense about whether someone without a heart can truly be destroyed, but this is more incoherent technobabble than trenchant allegory.

The movie's failure to provide any depth, any driver for conflict other than the arbitrary designation of goodness and evil, is particularly frustrating in the case of its villain, Ra.One.  While he may be techincally a case of artificial intelligence gone wrong, Ra.One in fact has no intelligence at all, no emergent properties of any interest.  He wants to kill Prateek only because he is programmed to.  This is hardly an avatar of the Raavan of legend, whose intellect was so great that he mastered the Vedas in a single day.  The movie does makes a feeble nod at connecting Ra.One to the mythical demon he is named for; in one scene, Ra.One encounters a Dussehra festival, learns about his namesake, and questions whether a villain who needs to be vanquished year after year is really vanquished at all.  This one weak attempt at allegory hardly even rises to the level of lip service, and it's far from satisfying; it feels tacked-on and phoned-in, and if anything, it throws into relief how much more the movie could have done with the idea beyong choosing evocative names for its video-game automata.

As for the dual heroes, Shekhar and G.One, they don't offer much more either in the way of substance or entertainment value.  Shekhar is presented in broad strokes that, I suppose, are supposed to invoke humorous southern-Indian sterotypes; the irony of doing so alongside a running joke in which the Sino-Indian Akashi repeatedly protests that "not all Chinese are Jackie Chan!"  seems lost on the filmmakers.  At any rate, Shekhar is not so much a yokel as he is just an idiot.  G.One is equally dopey; his cartoonish attempts at being a real live boy (à la Pinnocchio, or Data) are perhaps meant to be sweet, but the rendering is just cloying and stupid.  If Ra.One has a redeeming feature, it is the occasionally charming moments of tenderness between Shekhar and Soniya; it is always refreshing when a movie offers a relatively mature married couple.  Yet these, like the hints of mythological substance, are too few and far between; Kareena Kapoor is especially underutilized here. 

Even the songs, so often the redemption of an otherwise forgettable film, fall frustratingly short in Ra.One.  "Criminal" and "Chammak challo" are too similar in sound and picturization - "Chammak challo" is marginally the better of the two, but the movie certainly does not need both.  The most charitable interpretation of this directorial choice is that the two songs are a kind of bookending, an attempt transform or develop the robotic G.One toward Shekhar-ness.  But there is nothing textual to justify such a generous interpretation of the two songs, which are more likely just there to pack twice the Shah Rukh Khan, twice the scantily-clad gori dancers, twice the big production numbers, twice the Akon songs into the movie.  (Incidentally, I can't even hear Akon's voice without immediately thinking of his  hilarious Lonely Island number "I Just Had Sex" - not an association one expects to have when watching a Hindi film!)  The soundtrack does include one superb song, "Bhare naina," definitely a keeper - but when the lights come up and the inanity of Ra.One finally and mercifully ends, I can't shake the feeling that even on an airplane there are much more satisfying ways to kill a couple of hours.