Krrish : Movie Review

Krrish: **

One sole reason why I have stopped watching anything that Sanjay Gupta (Kaante, Khauff, Musafr,Zinda) dishes out is because its all blatantly ripped off Hollywood and makes a pretension for being not so by wrapping it all up with swanky music videos. Rakesh Roshan has now entered the very same frame of film-making where chunks of contemporary Hollywood blockbusters get dumbed down and concocted with absolutely nerve-grating 80s style B-grade over-the-top melodrama. But projecting it as a kiddie fare, he’d again rake in probably triple the amount of moolah he did 3 years back with Koi Mil Gaya. And then make another sequel, that’s a concoction of few more Hollywood films dumbed down. And that’s what essentially Bollywood’s come to. What hurts me even more is that the parts of Krrish that can’t be classified under plagiarism are either braindead, or yawningly predictable or so badly directed and so over-acted that one seriously doubts if Mr Roshan’s completely lost it. Yes, the very same film-maker who gave us well-directed, over-the-top but imminently watchable Khudgarz, Kala Bazaar, and Khoon Bhari Maang takes three years to make this outlandish curry of a film, which ends up tasting of nothing at all.

Case in point the film’s first half. Filled to the brim with generic, implausible Bollywood sequences, not a single one of these catches you by surprise. All the characters mouth typical Bollywood lines, do the usual expressions and you can even predict what background score will play at what time. The same silly manipulation and melodrama that keeps the saas-bahu serials TRPs stable for years–its all here, for us to bear. And by us I mean anyone who’s grown out of it. If you are still of an age running in single digits or still discovering Bollywood or suffer from amnesia or oblivious to the fact that Hollywood exists, you probably would lap this all up and deem it as the next big step in Indian cinema’s new age evolution. An opinion that, I, for my rather unfortunate visits down the local DVD library, can’t hold.

Nor can I rate Krrish higher just to applaud Mr Roshan’s effort to make India’s first superhero. Because our heroes never were anything less than superheroes. Pick up any action flick starring anyone from BigB to Mithun to Sunny Deol–they could bash up, fly, leap, jump and still manage to do cross-city runs after trains in film after film after film. So please stop this empty talk of Krrish taking Bollywood to new levels of film-making. This is old Indian wine in a rusty old barrel pasted with a new label that’s translated word-to-word from a Californian wine bottle.

Any redeeming aspects for me then? Well the SFX isn’t quite as bad or as overdone as I had thought they’d be, the toned-down Minority Report interface (added with some bizarre heart-beat scans as passwords–what the hell was that!) and conflict are palpable and Roshan Jr’s physique and agility does lend a streak of believability to almost every Matrix meets House of Flying Daggers scene. He does perform like there’s no tomorrow but its all quite a waste as all he’s really doing from the first to the last frame is trying to infuse life into horrendously written scenes and dialogues. What pains me more is that he’s one of those rare dynamic actors who are capable of giving immense depth to even the most silent scenes (watch Fiza and Lakshya) but all we get to see him do after 2 years of on-screen sabbatical is a circus routine and loud theatrics. If Johars and Chopras brought about the demise of the performer in Shahrukh, rest assured Hrithik’s creative stab will be from within his home.

The rest of the cast goes about the motions mechanically (yes, Rekha and Naseeruddin Shah are asked to do the weepy granny and evil scientist routine to the last cliche, and both of them oblige) but the one who really deserves a mention in every Krrish review is Priyanka Chopra. The mademoiselle manages to fake her way through every scene she’s in and bore us to death in the process. Granted, its a stinking Bollywood-dame routine with strikingly sudden heart changes, but there’s something called an actor’s instinct. Maybe too much to ask from an erstwhile beauty queen but didn’t anyone see the rushes or what! She really amplifies Krrish’s mediocrity as a film, and her scenes with Hrithik could really give you a frostbite. Move over Celina Jaitley, the new ice maiden is here. The soundtrack’s filled with nice vocals but the tunes are ancient. Maybe to accentuate the pretence of small-town Krrish, the songs are the way they are but for someone who couldn’t take the movie, the ditties are going to bring up all the bad memories of watching them on-screen.

As I said earlier, if masala Bollywood potboilers still set your heart racing, you’ll be in for a treat. I had to gulp down two ibuprofens to get over the headache of this three hour long ordeal.