The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : This ‘jumbo’ effort could have been better

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Dec 27, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

This ‘jumbo’ effort could have been better

Cute: A scene from the animation film ‘Jumbo’.

It’s cute but leaves so much to be desired. One keeps wondering why the cute little elephants look like anything but elephants.

Despite that you don’t mind blue baby Jumbo or Jayaveer Singh (voiceover by Ashar Khan/Akshay Kumar), who goes out in search of his father, Yudhveer, a warrior in the kingdom of Shakti Nagar, but is infamous for being a runaway soldier after he loses to the rival kingdom’s elephant Bakhtawar (Gulshan Grover).

This villain tusker boasts of the strength of ten elephants. Jumbo’s mother (voice of Dimple Kapadia) is separated from him as he leaves her in search of his father.

Storyline

Still wondering about the story? Yawn! It’s the age-old, recurring tale of the battle between the weak (Shakti Nagar) and powerful kingdoms (Shaurya Nagar) mixed with a lost-and-found formula. Tired and traumatised with Shaurya Nagar’s brutal henchmen who loot Shakti Nagar of all their agricultural produce, they decide to wage war against them.

And guess who trains the elephants?

An experienced old mahout whose adopted daughter, a petite pink elephant Sonia (Lara Dutta) is Jumbo’s love interest!

The film, despite good music and popular numbers as “Everything is gonna be all right” that’s played in the background for most part of the film, a love song “Kya Madhoshiyan Hain” and a war song “Badhte Chalo”, leaves little impression.

Some respite

If an animation film is made for Indian kids, rest assured they would be able to identify more with Indian faces than Chinese.

This one has Chinese looking human soldiers and elephants.

Right, there is no need to get stereotyped, but distorted thin legs and trunks don’t make elephants anyway. Akshay Kumar wasn’t needed to jive on “Everything is gonna be all right” to begin this film.

Akshay factor

He should have restricted his role to a narrator. His thin voice doesn’t go with a warlike, gigantic tusker. But, not everything is lacklustre.

The delightful respite comes in the shape of a tiny colourful pigeon who plays postman (voice of Rajpal Yadav). He wears a hat, distributes his visiting cards printed on his own feathers, keeps a diary of contact numbers, and guess what? He proposes to petite dove too!

This much-hyped animation film from Percept Pictures doesn’t quite meet even the average standards.

The kids who have been fed on Kung-Fu Panda and Finding Nemo, and even Hanuman or Bal Ganesha for that matter, may not find it a great experience.

Watch it if you have no grand plans for the weekend.

RANA SIDDIQUI ZAMAN

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Andhra Pradesh