KRRISH 3 REVIEW and BO THREAD -- POST HERE - Page 36

In a scene in Krrish 3, Bollywood's bas***dised version of an American superhero film, a supervillain called Kaal (Vivek Oberoi) stands atop the rubble, while Krrish (Hrithik Roshan) lies amongst it. The villain's maniacal laughter is followed by a standard Who's Your Daddy dialogue. The background music expectantly picks up. You wait in anticipation. One of two things will happen, you figure. Either the superhero will figure out a chink in the villain's armour. Or be enraged by the villain's disparaging remark against a family member. Surely, for all that is sanctimonious to a traditional Hindi film, it has to be the second. Yet, through the scene, all I kept really noticing is a billboard in the background that read: HUNGAMA - Entertainment Unlimited.

It's tough to put in words the experience that is Krrish 3. I was left a bit overwhelmed in the end - by the magnitude as well as the absurdity of what it set out to achieve. The film seems to have been painstakingly designed - the script seems to have been laboured on, the action is ambitious and the special effects department (Red Chillies VFX) has done a pretty neat job. Yet, so much of it is so shockingly shoddy, juvenile and cheesy, you keep oscillating between two extremes, never quite being able to decide what you really think of the film.

But here's the thing: Krrish 3, given all its banality, is an extremely fun watch. Fun, in a very it's-so-enjoyable-watching-this-lame-attempt-at-duplicating-Hollywood's-superhero-template kinda way. You should know, however, that Krrish isn't your regular so-bad-it's-good variety. It's the kind of film you'll look back at twenty years later, and consider it to be a cult you had the fortune of experiencing on a big screen. Your kids, meanwhile, will point in your direction and laugh at the kind of drivel you had to deal with. They'll watch it too, like we watch a really campy Mithun Chakraborty film from the '80s. Or how we watch and re-watch Manoj Kumar's Clerk (another much-underrated superhero film).

Krrish 3's script writers apparently worked on the screenplay for a year-and-a-half. That's entirely believable. There doesn't seem to have been any doubt in the minds of the half-a-dozen writers, consisting of Honey Irani, Robin Bhatt, Irfan Kamal, Akarsh Khurana, dialogue writer Sanjay Masoom and director Rakesh Roshan, that they were creating something truly exemplary. The first two parts in the film series - Koi Mil Gaya and Krrish - made pots of money and there seemed to have been an inherent confidence that they'd crack it with Krrish 3 too. Yet, ambition coupled with naivety, and the fact that everything's been ripped off from several Hollywood superhero films, makes this a unique effort.

You have words like "telekinesis", "cloning", "antidote" and "mutation" floating around, but all of them seem out of place in a film that has the dialogue, "Jahaan crisis hai, wahaan Krrish hai." Or an extremely intense sequence that shows Krrish's father, the specially-abled Rohit, working on the antidote for a virus (labelled "Virus"), between spoonfuls of Bournvita (Krrish 3, among many other things, is a 150 minutes-long Spot the Brand contest). The production values shift between big-budget extravaganza to B-grade television levels, like in a scene where the virus hits the city ("Bachao, Krrish bachao").

These are only some of Krrish 3's many joys. There's also the skimpily clad Kangana Ranaut, playing the shape-shifter Kaya, a "maanvar" (Man-plus-jaanwar. Oh yes.), who performs feline dance steps in the middle of a desert in a dream sequence. And Priyanka Chopra, who calls Krrish aka Krishna "Husband" because, you know, they are married. Oberoi is extremely sincere as Kaal, a Professor X-meets-Magneto character, who utters the film's funniest line: "Daaad."

Then there's Hrithik Roshan, whose launch pad Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai (2000) was a super-hit. Thirteen years later, it seems like Roshan's launch is a work-in-progress. The film's only purpose seems to be displaying his many assets, like that enormously large bicep, always strategically facing the camera. He's made to dance even when he's not required, and fight, fly and push heavy objects, as every good superhero must. Roshan's superhero avatar is infinitely more enjoyable than his portrayal of Rohit, the annoying man-child from Koi Mil Gaya, who's grown years older, which makes him a much older and annoying man-child.

But all this, really, is mere nit-picking. Krrish 3 is a bloody enjoyable film, even if for all the wrong reasons. Watch it in all its big-screen glory, and live to tell the tale.