Robot Who? Rajni?? Huh!!

(Just an attempt to stay in senses while the rest of the world has gone mad behind the hype; thoughts on why I haven’t really bothered to watch the movie in the near future, at least till I see/hear a few dozen people having suffered from over expecting. So if you are an ardent Rajni fan (like I was in the past) you might not like reading this one)

Why so much hype for a film, that has a 60 year old in the lead opposite a female of his daughters age, where the 60 year old is playing a younger individual that too as a Robot?, you wouldn’t imagine such stuff even with Hollywood.

I have been a big Rajni fan all my life, but for the last 5 years or so, I’ve lost the respect and love I had for his acting (except for Chandramukhi, though I don’t think it was cos of him that the movie was a hit!) as its been quite a while that he has acted himself, the roles that he has been donning lately are all over the sky ones where he isn’t much of an importance either in terms of acting or in terms of his genuine style that we always loved about him, as the character he plays are much larger than life, beyond the reach of a sane humans understanding. It’s just his name which is bringing people to the theatres and later getting back disappointed, be it Sivaji or be it Baba, both were flops! And I don’t think bringing up his appearance in Kuselan helps his case any more, the movie was promoted as if it was a Rajni movie but ended up as a guest appearance which wasn’t worth it also! To sum things up, he’s been quiet a disappointment to me in the last few years and I am no more excited about his films specially when they are over hyped with zillions spent on the movie with less of his acting and more of sci fi stuff, where’s ‘The Rajni’ factor? Where’s his style like in Basha? Padayappa? Arunachalam? I Miss them!!

Even if the Robot was decent enough the credit I think would go to Shankar for the overall work in the movie, how much does it depend on Rajni that there’s so much hype around for it being his movie? The Rajni days are gone, let’s accept it! He is no Kamal Hassan kind of persona who picks and chooses his work and executes it in such a way that the movie speaks for itself than he being the promoter of his movie. Do we remember Dasavatharam? Agreed that it was hyped as a Kamal starrer with Kamal playing ten roles and all those talks on world record, but after watching the movie you really feel the kind of work Kamal has done in the movie, each of the character’s he played in the movie spoke for itself, at times one wouldn’t even realize if one of those characters was Kamal at all, if you previously dint know that Kamal was playing ten roles.

And more or less I guess Shankar having seen Kamal play a scientist in Dasavatharam, would have envisioned even Rajni playing one and being a smash hit, but I guess with  Rajni in the lead everything else takes a back seat, no matter Rajni has something special to offer in it or not, what matters to the producer is his pay back, which is a sure thing with Rajni playing the lead, all the money invested would be back in no time, dint we see that with flops like Baba, Kuselan et al. Why does Rajni have to copy Kamal and be a scientist? Are his artificial stunts (& make up, the white hair.. Grrr!) not already enough for the audience to be able to digest? At the end of the day though everyone makes their own money, right from theatre owners, producers, the entire unit involved in the film making, the audience lose! They pay whatever it takes for them to take a first look at the over hyped stuff with an actor who has just passed an age where he could do something commendable (except for Amitabh & Kamal for their respective ages and charm) and keeps selling just cos of his past and his fans don’t want to disappoint him so they watch the same flop movie n number of times to become visible to their favorite star, how Stupid!

Talking about the ratings so far of the movie, TOI has given it a 3.5 (TOI’s ratings are always exaggerated, think of it, it rated Anjaana Anjaani 3, which a lot of other sources have rated 1 on average!, we all know about TOI’s ratings, don’t we?), a couple of other sources that I checked had given it a 3, just a ‘3’ for so much of artificial hype and money? That too I am sure was given cos they don’t have the courage to rate it down keeping in mind the mass madness for Rajni, fans wouldn’t be able to digest a low rating and if that’s not a valid point, then lets just say, the direction and the screen play of the movie would have worked in its favor. The only question I want to ask is, has Rajni been of any significance in the success of the movie per say?! Leave alone the name and his past! Talk about his performance/ presence in this movie alone. Did his acting add any value to the rating or the entertainment part of the movie? Be Honest!! Then why so much HYPE?!!!

Today’s Favorite Line – Here’s one from the Robot himself – “Buddy if I beat you, even Google wont be able to find you” (huh.. I wonder why I called it a favorite line :x)

Today’s Favorite Song – Waiting on the world to change