Rajnikanth, and ROBOT!

Will-So dude, am bored. lets go do something fun.
Me-ok. i'm in. what u got in mind?
Will-lets watch a movie?
Me-Ok. which movie?
Will- how about Robot?
me-Robot? the rajnikant movie? The ROBOT? THE RAJNIKANT?
will- yes. The Robot. plus, its got aishwarya rai. how bad could it be eh?
me-Plus you've seen it already in its tamil avatar. really, why would u wanna do this?
Will-coz i figured its better than the alternatives and coz i really wanted you to see it? oh and it got like what 3.5 stars in the TOI. and 4 in the HT. and thats not even the best source for a review!
me- NO WAY! i am not seeing that movie!
will- nachos on me.
me- i guess i could watch it. i mean it is rajnikanth after all. its the guy they make all those jokes about (for said jokes, refer here and here. i could have repeated the jokes, but 1)i do not tell other peoples jokes, and 2)i dont have the patience to type all those out! and also they are really lame anyway, but whatever). and he is the guy who even Newton is scared of. but jokes apart he is like the God in south india. so there must be some reason behind the hype. and the ratings were so great! lets try it.
will-YAY!
if only a storm had arisen them to wipe me off the face of the earth, i would have been saved the torment of the movie. but then, the great rajni didnt sneeze at that time, so how could a storm have arisen!
so we went to the movie.
it begins inconspicously, with a banner of the producers, and then a visual that says- starring- SUPERSTAR RAJNI. and then after some stuff, it moves to the actual movie.
it begins with the great rajni making a robot (surprise!) he keeps trying to make it work, but alas when he asks it to walk, it stumbles. and so, rajni, in an effort to explain why the robot must look like him, uses a motion stimulator to make the robot copy his movements while walking.
meanwhile, aishwarya rai, whose character is called sana, is trying to contact rajni- who is called professor vaseegaran. she is trying incessantly to reach him, in the process leaving 108 missed calls, 1000 messages, countless (actually they gave a specific figure but i forget it) ims and emails, because she is his girlfriend. eventually, after what i presume must have been a lot of time, rajni successfully makes the robot, which as i already explained looks exactly like him. now at this point of time, he remembers that he has a family, a gf, etc so he goes home, and introduces the robot to his family, who name him chitti (dont ask me, i dont know what that means). finally, he goes to aishwarya rai, who blessedly had no dialogue in the movie up until that point, and hence was doing what she does best, look like a pretty face. now rajni asks her to pardon him, there are some suitably lame jokes about why they shouldnt break up, and eventually after a song and dance sequence, we get to see the villain, a professor bohra. this guy is trying to make robots of his own, but they do not work. he thinks that the reason they dont work is coz there is something wrong with their programming or something. but i beg to disagree, based on the scene, where he asks one of them to shoot, and it ends up attempting to shoot the load (if u dont know what i mean, i really will not explain. not on a public forum !) i just think that this professor bohra guy had been on the wrong websites!
anyway, now that the hero and villain are introduced, the movie moves on to chitti's first public demonstration, where he is suitably admired by the robotics people from all over the world! he apparently has a 1tb ram, 1000tb memory, and some such insane configuration. everyone is suitably awed. one person in the crowd, decides that this robot, which is obviously extremely intelligent, must be asked theological questions, and so he asks him if God exists. the robot, looks at vassegaran, ie: rajnikanth, and says, he created me, he is GOD!


Way to go with self-promotion and self deification Mr Rajnikanth! even the damn pope is afraid of making claims of godhood! but you? never!

well with these facts established, the movie goes on to sana's medical exam, where she uses chitti to cheat in the exam. this is followed by him saving her from goons trying to rape her, despite his battery failing in between the fight scene. vaseegaran is suitably thanked by sana. and there is another song and dance sequence, followed by something that the movie was building upto- chitti's examination by the robotics department, called AIRD, for whatever reason. the head of the department is for some reason that Bohra guy, who nearly makes chitti stab vaseegaran to prove a point, ie: he is unreliable coz he can be made to stab its masters literally. next up, chitti tries to rescue a girl from a burning building, and uncaring of the fact that she is not suitable for public presentation, takes her out into a public area. to avoid the embarrassment, the girl runs,and is run over by a truck.

a sad vaseegaran, tries to redo the robot, by giving it understanding of human emotions, and psyche. this succeeds, bohra is happy, he passes the robot in his evaluation, and vaseegaran is a happy man.

at this point, i skipped out of the movie to escape the movie for some inexplicable reason. a lot of things happened, and i ended up walking into the next theatre and watching the movie playing there for twenty minutes while eating a mars bar. also, as a side note, the movie playing there was literally a leave your brain outside the hall kind of movie, coz it was brainless! anyway.

when i got back, the interval had happened, and the next half had begun. when i pick up the tale again, its sana's birthday party. chitti has fallen in love with her, and a couple of songs have happened. so sana tries to explain to chitti, that he is a robot, and she a human, and hence they cannot have a relationship. chitti argues, most obviously, using the best possible logic, that love is not about sex, u do not need a 'man' to have kids, and so on. if only things had worked out at that point, i'd have been saved the trouble! but alas, things dont work out, and a rejected chitti is left to mope around while recharging. at this point it is revealed that bohra has made a deal with terrorists to sell them working robots.
REMEMBER this is a rajnikanth movie so the terrorist line cannot be a major plotline. afterall, how can someone else be the villain?

and so, bohra tries to corrupt chitti, succeeds,and the next day, in a vital indian army evaluation, chitti messes up the evaluation coz he loves sana (talk about original!)
vasee is upset, he cuts up up chitti into pieces and dumps him in a junkyard. this would have been a suitable ending for a bollywood movie, but this is the superstar rajnikanth. so the story proceeds to bohra, who picks up the junk pieces of chitti, and makes chitti version 2.0, with an additional destruction red chip installed.
version 2.0, is convinced by bohra to take what it wants, ie: sana. meanwhile, sana and vasee are getting married. and so, in an original plotline, chitti kidnaps sana from the wedding.

the next part is where the true genius of rajnikanth comes in. in a long sequence of a police chase, chitti drives through chennai like a maniac, kills like just a hundred cops, does more rash driving (does some accidents, but miraculously, the mercedes  he is driving stays intact! now i know which car i wanna buy when i can!) and he does this all, while sana is in the next seat. and u know what, not one of a thousand possible bullets, and other projectiles from the various accidents even comes close to touching her. eventually, chitti is surounded by cops on all sides, so he uses his magnetic fields, to capture their guns, and starts shooting from just bout 100 guns at the same time (the background score at this time, was a really decent !  lots of poor dead cops later, chitti wins, and takes sana back to bohra's lab. here, bohra, is murdered by chitti, and chitti starts multyplying into lots of chitti's! (as i said, bohra could never have been the villian, it was always supposed to be rajni vs rajni!)

after some more mindlessness, a song, some more mindlessness and twenty minutes later, the robots have taken over the AIRD headquarters, and are now nearly indestructible. but remember vaseegaran. he comes to the rescue pretending to be another robot. some more scenes follow, after which chitti realizes that vasee is like a trojan tht has infiltrated his system. so he assembles all his clones together, to test them and find vaseegaran. somehow, vaseegaran manages to stay undetected for like ten minutes. eventually, he literally dazzles the robots to escape with the girl. the robots chase, they combine together to form a sphere,a snake, and other forms to beat the entire chennai police force, and army personnel (just how bad is the indian army?)

so in the final showdown, its chitti's vs vaseegaran. chitti's assemble into a huge man, which tells vasee to F Off, in an innovative method. and vasee captures the original chitti, and somehow, takes out the destruction chip.
!
and no, thats not the end
there is a court hearing, chitti (now made back into a good form) saves vasee's ass, and vasee is told to destroy chitti. chitti dismantles itself, while telling the audience how it failed when given human like attributes.

and well thats finally the end, with the moral science lesson.


the movie ends, i walk out with will.
me-Right, so you saw that, and yet u wanted me to see it?
Will- yeah. it was worth the expression on your face.
me- Really, how did that movie get 4 stars?! and how in gods name is rajnikanth a SUPERSTAR! how? its inexplicable.
will- yeah. well there is a good reason.l you'll understand.
and so we parted, after he nearly murdered me with tht movie.





much later, i got thinking, why did that movie get such a rating?
well according to will, and i cant believe i'm saying this, but i agree, its graphics, robot simulations, and other technical aspects were Truly hollywood like. it was a brilliantly done movie. so well done in fact that one almost ignored the lack of a basic intelligent story and plot, and etc. yes the movie was mindless. yes it insulted my intelligence as a human being. yes, it had nothing sensible in it.

and yes, there is nothing sensible on this blog ever either. but curse me if i'm wrong, rajnikanth pulled of senseless much better than i can ever! and yes, i do see why he is such a super star down south.
but that, like belief in the Gods, is down to personal realization, so i cant instruct u.




(PS: part of the reason is in the mindless south indian stereotype. but only a part. a small part. but other than that, there is a good reason too. forget it!)