Dedications

Being not a movie buff, watching movies is something done once a quarter with family. Most of the time it is kids deciding what to see, and wifey and me cart along as ‘Body Guard’ for the kids. So we did go and see ‘Body Guard’, and it turned out to be ‘Body Show’ like most Salman movies, where he has nothing besides his body to show. Story lacks realism, fantasy or fiction, and only mindless or needless action. To make it garish are the dialogues. None of the dialogues of today’s Hindi movies will remain for posterity like dialogues from ‘Sholay’.

Hindi movies lack originality and resort to remakes of South Indian movies or a potpourri of hashed stories from Hollywood. Nothing is awesome like a Rajnikanth ‘Robot’, or a Amir Khan’s ‘Ghajini’, ‘Taarey Zameen Par’ and ‘3 Idiots’. ‘Robot’ is also inspired or poached from a clutter of Hollywood movies, or ‘3 Idiots’ lifted off from a novel, but is still has a ‘Made in China’ flavor. Like Chinese Goods which we allege are poor or bad in quality, the world still has its goodies made from there.

Then comes in the media the ‘self anointed and ordained’ authority of rating and judging movies. Most of the reviews are just promoting a movie if they are paid or thrashing it if they are not. Like the underworld, pay them so they protect the movie with generous words or downright criticize it. Unfortunately even the media is now confused like movie goers to know which is a good movie or a bad movie. Movie going which was a planned family or friends get-together activity, is now turning out to be another boring exercise.

Movie makers are getting even more confused as what to recycle, what to remake, to the extent even have run out of ideas for the title of a movie. Movie titles are now words of lyrics of the golden era yesteryears. So you have names like ‘Bachna ae Haseeno’ or ‘Kabhi Alvida na Kahna’, and the list is endless. Now if you can’t have an original name for a title what originality can you have in the story? The aim is now simple like ‘Instant Noodles’, make ‘Instant Money’. So if there is an actor who can be used, use him and rake the money. It is no longer create a story and then take an actor to play a part, it is take an actor and pirate ideas from movies and create it around him. If it works make a sequel. How many sequels have lasted like a Sylvester Stallone’s ‘Rocky’?

The other bird brain idea to promote a movie is getting in actors to play a cameo role. So after remaking South Indian movies, it was sad to see a ‘RaOne’ rope in someone legendary as Rajnikanth to do a cameo, and neither do justice to him. To make it worse it was an insult to Rajnikanth, and only confirmed that all Rajnikanth jokes are no longer jokes. So now a Hindi Movie Super Hero even needs Rajnikanth to survive (fly). Amitabh Bachhan’s voice was used to introduce a part of the movie in ‘RaOne’, which a bigger insult to a man who is known for his voice, where even his voice was not recognized in the movie.

‘RaOne’ was such a painful experience, where my kids who would usually lap up anything, now wanted my lap to sleep. The movie was so ‘Rotten’ and now gathered that Shahrukh plans to make a sequel, and I would like to suggest he names the sequel ‘RaTen’.