There is a moment during the first chase sequence in the film Ra.One where Kareena's character asks her son Prateek as to how can Ra.One and G.One come out of the virtual world and continue the virtual enmity in real life. To this Prateek tells her to continue driving through this mess, he will tell her later. My biggest grouse with the film stands exactly at this point. Everything is, "watch now, explanation will be done later."; which coincidentally never happens at all. For a film which is full of scientific advancements in present day like never even thought before one would at least expect the logic on which everything science is based on, no matter it being a Hindi film.
Superhero films are meant with logical reason to the super-power, even if it is extra-terrestrial nature. Case in point Koi Mil Gaya and Krish. Present that in even a single minute and everything is acceptable. But Ra.One conveniently leaves that all. There is no explanation as to how a game so advanced that its 'villain' with 0.01% of losing ratio comes out of in real world from virtual world but can be programmed in a jiffy by a 10 year old, not once but twice. And that too when the kid is not at all close to his genius father to learn the tricks of trade from him. The only apparent logic that the film gives is during the opening sequence where an apparently lost Shahana Goswami addresses London press in Hindi that, "its all possible because their company has made it."
Ra.One is ambitious without doubt, has some terrific VFX for an Indian film and is apparently the best 2D to 3D converted film I have watched, Hollywood included. But having a super-star like Shahrukh Khan who has access to best creative talent around the world making the audience accept the advancement of home-grown technology for a shamelessly paper thin story and almost no-direction by Anubhav Sinha is a monstrosity of illogical proportion.
The film turns out to be a spoof movie collage marketed as a superhero movie with scenes inspired from films like Spiderman, Superman, Tron Legacy, Iron Man, Matrix trilogy, X-Men series, Robot and even Mr Bean, 2012 and popular video games all rolled into a 70's style loud background scored film where the Hero and Villain will say their dialogues in slow motion and then the camera do a 10 sec slow pan of the person. SRK overdoes the tamil Shekhar with the racist Aiyo, the vulgar crotch touching acts and the horrendous hairstyle. As G.One he apparently mistakes his My Name is Khan's mentally challenged character as a virtual Robotic Character. At times when I was connecting with G.One's emotions, I used to shake myself from the sudden feeling that this is not MNIK. G.one touching the crotch of Ra.One was the height of vulgarity. Kareena is luminous like never before but her character is too shallow to feel her emotional bond with any event in her love or family life. The son's character is where one connects somewhat but his sudden maturity in a genius wizkid is hard to digest. Arjun Rampal apparently gets role of lifetime to act as mechanic as he is as an actor. His Ra.One is pointless and not once menacing as the game's non-destructive villain is described. The very talented Shahana Goswami is sidelined with sloppy dialogues and poorly written role.
At the end, Ra.One for me succeeds in making me understand the true value of originality and creativity in writing. The film will definitely be a benchmark in technical advancement in India but will sadly remain a flawed film as it has got no foundation of story which is a shame considering what smart writing and effective direction could have done with the no-holds barred losing of purse-strings by Shahrukh Khan.
I will rate it 2.5 on a scale of 5. It is neither here, nor there.
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