I don't do movie reviews, but......

Spoiler alert: Please don't read if you plan to watch Ra.One or 7aum Arivu.

Randomly Accessed nonsense.....

Correct me if I am wrong, but Shahrukh Khan refused to do "Enthiran" with Shankar and one year later made this film???? The mind boggles! So, was he trying to make a superhero movie or a convoluted love story? OK, I will keep this simple...the story was non-existent, the jokes were inhuman, the Tamizh speaking and noodle eating made me want to cry, the dialogs made me want to be an ostrich and bury my head in the ground, SRK had a bad-hair-first-half-of-the-film and in the second half, was perched uncomfortably on the roof of his house in a tight superhero suit, Thalaivar's cameo was painful (he is niceness personified, but he must now know when to draw the line), Dalip Tahil made me wish that I was blind and deaf, Sanjay Dutt and Priyanka Chopra could have spent their time more wisely, who the heck tailored Shahana Goswami's suits and did her hair (shudder!), the CG looked good, Kareena looked awesome and Arjun Rampal looked brooding and delish. Maybe Shahrukh should have stuck to formula and made a movie about how a geeky scientist lands a smoking hot girl in the first place. This could be set in a chateau in the alps and/or Amsterdam, with dreamy looks and great song picturization. Just when the audience is wading in sugar syrup, Arjun Rampal could have come in and created some brooding and delish ruckus, followed by tears. Then, Amitabh and Jaya could have been the wise and elderly matchmakers with saccharine smiles who unite the couple in the end. Everybody say "Shava Shava!" Seriously though, Ra.One could have been a truly fun flick if some semblance of focus had been maintained.....what a shame!

Making sense of it all....

I am fine for the first five minutes of the film, blissfully counting Surya's six-packs and enjoying strains of peaceful Mohanam, that seems to be the popular scale for most east-asian music. I'm only mildly flummoxed at a certain Pallava prince leaving for China one fine morning because his teacher felt it was a good idea.....I tell myself that this is the 6th century and possibly the era of following instructions from teacher implicitly. Then, said prince starts to teach the art of Kalari to the people of China and somehow becomes much revered Karate/Kung-fu master who accepts poisoned food from his hosts because they don't want him to leave their land. I marvel at the speed at which I become brain-dead. Then, there is circus type buffoonery and some very half-hearted romance between the lead pair. This brings me to Shruti (of the Hassan fame): she is a lissome lass who has her mother's delicate features......very pleasant to look at until she decides to go spoil it all by opening her shapely mouth and talk in Tamizh. At one point, she lambasts some elderly scientists who mock all things Tamizh by speaking in chaste VJ/RJ Tamizh....the irony! Surya (and six-packs) don't disappoint, except for a very questionable choice of wardrobe. However he looks lost, as does most of the cast and by now most of the audience as well. The villain (appropriately called Dong Lee) is, to put it kindly, a blight on the face of all villains. For one, he actually looks cute in an eastern kinda way. Also, he does not actually do anything per se....just looks weirdly at random people who then do his bidding. Where is the scar on the face, the feral look in the eyes and the snarl, I ask you? Ding dong wears street clothes and looks pretty....even item girls need to shake a leg to get paid! By the time Biowar and scientific references roll around, I am comfortably ensconced in a coma. Key concepts are explained via Google searches and Wikipedia,3-D images of DNA strands are visible through regular microscopes, genetic memory is jogged with injections and immersion in a liquid chamber and I truly don't bat an eyelid. At this point, you could have told me that I am dear Moammar's long lost daughter and I would have cheerfully agreed, even marveling at the striking resemblance. It is all genetical, or is it genital? Pardon me ladies and gents, my neuron's are truly fried.

Inexpli-cable

The joys of cable television are many. Food channels tell us what to eat, do it yourself channels tell us how to build, design channels tell us how to design, Fox tells us not to like democrats, CNN tells us just the opposite, nature channels tell us that there is life beyond the TV screen (a life that we are unlikely to see outside the TV), fashion channels teach us to distinguish between real and unreal bodies, teen channels show us how our children are going to look and speak like in their tweens and teens (insufferable brats who complain loudly about how lame most things and their parents are), preschool channels train our youngest to watch the tube, so that they have a long attention span only for watching TV and maybe take a leak or two in between (at this rate, how are they going to get potty trained, I ask you?)  and, when we are in our sleep deprived mental dead zone, shopping channels tell us to pick up our wallets and order things that no sane person would buy. Sports channels tell our boys that it is OK to plonk themselves in front of TV for hours on end in smelly boxers, scratch their privates, cheer loudly with profanity, drink plenty of beer (not light beer, because every light beer manufacturer claims that all the others are watered down. So, just to be safe, no light beer) and ogle appreciatively at thin, well-endowed girls with long legs. "Women's" channels teach our girls how to read tripe, how to balance their checkbooks, how to get in touch with one's self (whatever that means), what designers to buy from, what celebrities to gush over, how to unfairly raise expectations about their future mates (who are presently watching aforementioned sports channels), how to get therapy when their boyfriend dumps them, and most importantly, how to cry at the drop of a hat. 

So, we live in homes that we decorate many times over, depending on the current trend. We save to buy cars which depreciate as soon as we leave the dealership. We spend thousands on electronics, which get outdated in a few months. We spend even more on fashion must haves and then pay a home organizer to organize them into a small closet, away from our spouse's eyes. We try out new recipes on our brand new Calphalons, burn the food consistently and then buy new copper pans to hang pristinely on our pot racks. We buy Williams Sonoma bakeware for our see-through glass cabinets and then go out and eat everyday. Following this, we take out expensive gym memberships and be disappointed that we need to actually work-out to reach our fitness goals. Alternatively, we realize much to our surprise that watching toned bodies work out sweatily on TV is not as satisfying as we think and actually makes us reach for that bag of potato chips or that tub of ice cream much faster. We have children because it seems like a good idea at the time or we desperately need the tax break and then stress out when we figure out that they have a mind of their own. We chide our kids for watching too much TV or gaming incessantly and promptly spend the better part of our evenings watching "Jersey Shore", spending hours on Facebook trying to find out what our "friends of friends" are up to or gambling online with 1,034,000 to 1 odds.


Newspapers and magazines proclaim that the sense of well-being is at an all time low but, don't panic dear readers....there is always therapy, Oprah or this guy.........