Robotox!!

As audience, we expect many things when we stake our money and time to watch a movie. But if movies were ever to expect anything from their audience then I’m sure Rajinikanth starrer Robot (Enthiran in Tamil) would want its audience to suspend disbelief (and perhaps much, much more) for a good 165 minutes. I happened to see this movie some days back on TV and regret not having watched it in the theatre.

Directed by S.Sankar, Robot stars Rajinikanth, Aishwariya Rai and Danny Denzongpa in prominent roles. In a nutshell, the movie is about a scientist Vaseegaran (played by Rajinikanth) who creates a lookalike robot. His mentor Dr. Bohra (played by Denzongpa) misuses it and turns it to a Frankenstein’s monster. How to put an end to the mayhem caused by the robot forms the crux of the movie.

Every plot has a start, an end and everything in between. And in Robot it’s the ‘in between’ that matters.

This robot named Chitti (also played by Rajinikanth) can match up to the speed of a Chennai local train and remove random wires from junction boxes and insert it somewhere near his abdomen to charge himself. In a particularly noteworthy scene, Chitti switches on his magnetic mode which attracts all his opponents’ weapons. The weapons then align themselves on his body almost making him look like Goddess Durga. Sana (played by Rai) manages to do a Munnabhai at an exam because Chitti tells her the answers via Zing-Ping protocol, yes Zing-Ping protocol! These are just three of the gems Robot has to offer.

The best ones are when Chitti develops human feelings. He helps a woman in labor deliver and earns himself a kiss from Sana. That’s when Cupid strikes this metal man’s heart. Like most men in love he too grows possessive. And this time Chitti does unimaginable things. He chases a mosquito right from Sana’s cheek to a garbage dump, converses with it and listens to its demands (one of them being ‘declaring mosquito as the national bird’). There is also a mosquito named Dengue-Lakshmi. He dances like there’s no tomorrow and also confesses his love for Sana. Sensing her confusion, he assures to artificially inseminate her (not exactly inseminate but plant some chip or something) and give her the distinction of being the first woman to deliver a part-human, part-robot baby. She nixes this prospective Guinness World Record offer. This enrages him enough to kidnap Sana from her marriage hall and take her to a place full of similar looking robots.

Operation ‘Rescue Sana’ begins with the help of state and central machinery. This is when the movie becomes a complete special effects festival. A huge ball of closely knitted Rajinikanths, a Rajinikanth pyramid or a colossal Rajinikanth snake – the viewer is treated to all of these. But not once does the movie lose the viewer and therein lies its USP.

In the end of course Chitti is destroyed but not before he testifies for Vaseegaran’s innocence.

While Rajinikanth (in the thousand or lakh roles) that he has played is his usual entertaining self, Rai has nothing much to do than look good. A.R. Rahman’s music is reasonable and so are the special effects.

I know this may be spoiler for those who have not seen Robot, but I still recommend it and assure you that what you’ve read is just a nano fraction of what you’ll see.