BEING NOT to get convinced with the budget of the movie, is the one of the first thing I learned after ‘Roop ki Rani Choron ka Raja’ in my growing years. The rule kept proving right with Bollywood’s tryst with ‘most expensive’ tags proving turtle one by one – Akshay Kumar starrer Blue being the latest. However, being an ardent fan of superheroes, science fiction and Bollywood movies, Ra One seemed to be worth a try watching. But what a letdown!! While Ra One should have picked up from where Koi Mil Gaya and Krrish left, it seemed to have wandered away in the direction of Raju Chacha (another budget heavy), Drona (a dhoti clad superhero) and Love Story 2050 (science fiction without much science in it). The makers not even for once seemed to be sure about the target audience of film and script seemed to be the least important thing. Shaktiman was better. 
 
The plot revolves around Tamilian Shekhar played by SRK, who is a video game developer, based in UK and works for multinational Barron Industries. He is married to Punjabi chammak challo Kareena and has a boy named Prateik. Despite being a game developer, over Bollywoodization makes Shekhar act as stereotype madrasi who will eat chowmein with curd and act as a nerd to embarrass his son. He speaks in English with strong Tamil influence but surprisingly when it comes to delivering motivational dialogues to his son will pick up hindi shayaris.

Shekhar builds Ra One a negative character in a popular game launched by his company as his kid thinks villains are cooler than heroes. However, to leave a scope of survival (and to give the film an ending), he also builds G One or the good guy. Problem begins when Ra One takes his work little too seriously and comes out of the gaming world to the real world and starts killing people.

To maintain balance G One follows suit. Ra One has a capability of attaining shapes and forms of any object near its vicinity akin to Terminator from Hollywood. To counter it, G One a character with a 'heart' and a chance of 0.001 percent of winning wages war against the evil counterpart.

Action sequences, which were much talked about, disappoints greatly. Just when you start comparing the action sequences to Rajnikanth jokes, Superstar Rajnikanth actually walks in for a cameo in his Robot avatar to meet G One without any particular reason. And finally in Bollywood style G One wins the battle.

Some of the special effects like an unstoppable train breaking through the station and landing in the roads (Speed 2 and Die Hard style) were obviously giant leap in technology in bollywood – though not perfect, but good enough. Kudos to Khan for at least spending money to try them out. Arjun Rampal as Ra One walks with Ravan burning in the backdrop – a simple scene, but pleasing to eye. But it all ends there. The rest of it doesn’t amaze you much.

The plot of the movie was simple but the actual script was probably as long as the synopsis because the audience just kept searching for the real story between what looked a collection of various scenes. For performances, Shahrukh suddenly have taken a backward leap in his career for reasons unknown. It becomes really difficult to believe that an actor of his caliber who had given some of the finest performances even in recent days (Chak De, My Name is Khan) will suddenly start acting like a newcomer. As for Kareena, she surely will like to keep this movie on of her list of unforgettable. Arjun Rampal walks forward with his new found meanness after Om Shanti Om and probably is the only watchable factor in the movie apart from the chammak challo song.

After not so successful IPL venture till date, SRK could have been saved from embarrassment by not producing this film. In a recent interview, Shahrukh emphasized on the importance of making commercial movies rather than art films. Ra One, no matter how much commercially success it is projected to be at the end of year, will stand out as a sore thumb in the list of costliest blunders made.