Sunday, October 17, 2010

"Robot" (Hindi, English) aka "Enthiran" (Tamil) aka "Robo" (Telugu) (movie, 2010): A review of various robot & monster tropes

Display showing Aishwarya Rai and Rajnikanth in 2010 movie with multiple titles - Robot in Hindi and English, Enthiran in Tamil, Robo in Telugu
I liked the first half - a variety of classic robot fiction tropes, Indianized & sometimes modernized. Later half was ok but is too Hollywoodish; near end, it turns into a monster movie, borrowing a lot of monster imagery from Hollywood.

Story summary.

Dr Vasi has created a hominid robot, Chitti, targeted eventually for battle role in military. We see a variety of bugs in its software, as well has some funny & lovable scenes, as he's introduced into human society: ask him to hit you, & he will; his lack of human mores (saves a woman from fire - only she was in bathroom & it didn't occur to him to cover her before depositing her among the crowds). He'll eventually be given the emotional ability, & will quickly fall in love with his creator's girlfriend!

That's first half. Second half is Chitti's transformation into a monster when evil Dr Vohra introduces malicious code into his software. This point on, it's a variety of visual effects borrowed from multiple Hollywood movies.

Fact sheet.

Released: Setember 2010.
Director: S Shankar.
Cast: Aishwarya Rai (Vasi's girlfriend); Rajnikanth (Dr Vasi, Chitti, & many other robots & monsters in later half); Danny (Dr Vohra).
This post is based on Hindi version of the movie.

2 comments:

Arvind Mishra said...

Good Review!
A review is available in Hindi here -
http://mishraarvind.blogspot.com/2010/10/blog-post_09.html

Tinkoo said...

Arvind - I didn't know you had a new blog!