Mishmash of the bizarre
Genre: Science fiction
Director: Rakesh Roshan
Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Priyanka Chopra, Naseeruddin Shah and Rekha.
Storyline: Superman saves the world
Bottom line: Anything goes
Rakesh Roshan's `Krrish' has opened in a blaze of publicity. But beneath this hype lies a disappointing effort to create a genre of Indian Superman.
The reasons for this are the usual: mainstream Indian cinema just cannot accept that too many ingredients merely spoil the broth. If Roshan wanted `Krrish' to be a Superman saga, why did he not let it be just that?
`Krrish' begins with an IQ test on five-year-old Krishna by his school teachers. Midway, his grandmother (Rekha) whisks him away from the prying eyes of the world, because she knows that the child has the supernatural qualities of his father, Rohit, who was blessed by an ET and turned into a wonder in Roshan's earlier work, `Koi... Mil Gaya.'
The father's power proved to be his nemesis: hired by a mad scientist to create a computer that will see the future, Rohit was killed when things went wrong. The grandmother does not want that to happen to Krishna.
The storyline
Krishna (Hrithik) grows up like Tarzan, playing with birds and animals, partly because he has to remain hidden from the world and partly because his friends find him far too superior to themselves. But the film has to run its three hours, and Krishna finds himself enchanted by a television reporter, Priya (Priyanka Chopra), who comes hang-gliding to his village.
The story takes Krishna to Singapore, where Priya lives and where the young man transforms himself into Krrish, clad in black leather and a mask, to save mankind. He gets into the new avatar only to keep the promise he made to his grandmother that he would not reveal his magical side.
At this point, the movie could not have seemed more juvenile. With Priya chasing Krrish through the streets of Singapore to get a good story for her television channel, and the mad scientist (Naseeruddin Shah), having found out the true identity of Krrish, plotting to destroy him, Roshan's work resembles a mishmash of the bizarre.
Little originality
Ultimately, one finds that `Krrish' has little to do with the Superman. This rather small part of the film — despite the contribution of Hong Kong-based action choreographer Tony Ching, who trained Hrithik in martial arts — is the least gripping with many of the scenes appearing rather amateurish. There is also little originality here. Ideas and scenes have been freely lifted from elsewhere.
The first half of `Krrish' is somewhat tolerable, largely because Hrithik's performance as a shy village bumpkin is believable, and not without its merits.
Chopra overacts most of the time, and two brilliant actors, Rekha and Shah, have been completely wasted in a movie where Roshan seems to have concentrated (in vain) so much on special effects that he did not even bother about Rekha's appearance.
Her wrinkled face is undoubtedly the work of a rank bad artiste. And, the angles chosen to photograph Shah make him look clownish rather than evil.
In Bollywood, one supposes, anything goes, and is invariably construed as fun.
GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN
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Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
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