Movie Review Of "The Robot"

Director: S. Shankar

Cast: Rajnikanth, Aishwarya Rai, Danny Denzongpa

Rating: 3 1/2

The world is waiting to see what a movie worth almost 200 crores will look like and voila! The Robot is unveiled. And who can carry this huge load on their shoulders but Rajnikanth, the greatest superstar of the country? If you felt that the character of Chulbul Pandey was larger than life, you should get a load of Robot, who is towering, absolutely gargantuan.

Robot is made on a scale that’s spectacular. The look and feel of the film is mindboggling in its grand-ness. Just add to that, the star power of Rajnikanth, the Demi-God, and you have a movie that is sure to rock the world.

Of course, as in all movies that involve Gods, this one is also pretty mythical in nature so the viewer is supposed to go with a complete absence of disbelief. After all, one is in the presence of superhuman beings here.

There are no rules and don’t try and use that human logic of yours. If you can put that aside, to entertain you is Rajnikanth’s business.

In Robot, we have a double dose of Rajnikanth (how lucky can we get? Two for the price of one ticket?) The film opens with Rajnikant as Dr. Vasi, who is in the process of creating an andro-humanoid robot named Chitti, also played by (surprise!) Rajnikanth.

Chitti has the powers of a 100 men, which would be harnessed to serve humanity in meaningful ways. Chitti is a sweet machine, doing fun and funny things in a world he is innocent about.

It’s very like the American films where and alien or a robot will come into the life of a human and then try and fit into the human world.

So there are some hilarious moments, when Chitti makes some crazy mistakes; moments that have the audiences rolling with laughter. While he is a machine, all is well.

The trouble starts when Dr.Vasi decides to breathe human emotion into him and the matter of the robot’s revolt is clinched when Vasi’s girlfriend, the gorgeous Sana (Aishwarya Rai), plants a peck on his cheek.

By the way, what is Aish doing in the movie? Well, she’s looking fabulous for one, And… she’s looking fabulous for two, and ummm…she’s looking fabulous for three! And that’s about it. She does have some lines like, “He’s not my boyfriend, he’s my toy-friend”, referring to Chitti.

Once the robot falls in love, then there is trouble in paradise and he has to be destroyed by his maker. The dying throes as the robot with the human emotion dies, is kind of tragic-comic and more than a bit macabre.

Here is when in steps the bad scientist, Danny Denzongappa, who rescues and resurrects Chitti and plants in him the destruction chip.

And here’s where all Jurassic parks and Godzillas and King Kongs should start to run for cover because Chitti has, in one finger of his, the capacity of destruction all of them together could not dream of. Cheers to Rajni Saar. Cheers to director, Shankar.

The USP of the film are the special effects that have been created by the Stan Winston Studio which reportedly provided the animatrics for films like Jurassic Park and Avatar. The stunts have been choreographed by Yuen Woo Ping, the Hong Kong based action director who created the high-adrenalin stunts of classics like Kill Bill and Matrix.

The sets are spectacular and on a huge scale, be it the laboratories or the outdoors, every locale is stunning. The only weak point, however is A R Rahman’s music which is disappointing to the extreme.

The climax will have you either running for cover of standing on your seats and cheering as almost a hundred Rajnikanths eat up helicopters, smash cars, batter the earth and create never seen before mayhem. An army of Chittis transforms itself into a snake and gorges on the enemy.

Whew! Exhausting! But man, what paisa vasool!