Oct 4th Pic!

"Robot!"

Pic from my Phone, didn't have my DSLR handy but needed this pic! 

I don't watch many Indian movies, maybe one or two every few years, the main problem with them is quality and the length. Though they're getting better and some are even great, but most are just glorified soap operas. Considering the audience it makes sense, overall they're not too sophisticated so the industry tends to cater to the most common denominator, it makes sense because that's where the dough is. Hollywood is the same way, it puts out 80% crap, but the indie film movement is much greater here than in India, which also puts out some great indie films but they don't get nearly as much recognition like that crap we had a few years ago "Juno". 

The point being, I went to see an Indian movie on Monday, it was the most expensive movie ever made in India (or maybe just South India, not sure), but anyway it used all the resources available to Hollywood directors to make it happen.  The result however was pure and unequivocal crap. Did the movie have redeeming moments? Sure, Did it throw everything and the kitchen sink into the plot? You bet, so was it way too long? YES!!! 

The story is about a scientist who develops a state of the art robot, at first it's basically a talking and walking humanoid that takes commands and does exactly what it's told. As the plot develops it develops conscience and falls in love with the scientists girl...a big no-no in the scientific community I'm sure. On paper the movie sounds awesome, it tackles all the social taboos we might encounter on developing a Robot that knows it's better than us...if you've seen the "Social Network" this robot is like Mark Zuckerburg minus the whole human decomposing factor. So what went wrong? Well besides the cheesy jokes and the awful song/dance routines (The lead is 50+, I don't care if he's playing a robot, I do not want to see him dance, even if it's with Ashwyra Rai) the story simply tries to do too much. Most of us can agree that "Transformers" was crap, but at least the movie knew what it was, a brainless action blow-em up and in that aspect it succeeded and was fairly entertaining. This movie never hit that sweet spot, too preachy and heavy to be campy (though it did have unintentional campy scenes) and too dumb to be taken seriously. The movie did have plenty Asimov refrences to keep me happy but in the end (which I didn't get to see, after 2 hr 45 min + run time I had to leave to pick up Eva, the movie ended at the 3hr mark) it failed miserably.    

Great article by Slate.  Make sure to watch the trailer...LOL.