Robot

Rating : 6/10
Release Date : 1st October, 2010
Time : 180 minutes
Director : S Shankar; Co-writer: Sujatha Rangarajan, Karky Vairamuthu; Music : A R Rahman
Starring : Rajni, Aishwarya, Danny Dengzopa

You must only watch this film if you have a thing for Rajni or Aishwarya or special effects. My rating is purely driven by the latter two but if I’d used the principle of negative marking, then after deducting points for weak characters, weaker story and ditzy dialogue, the overall rating would also have been negative. But then, as most fans of Rajni say, if Rajni is there, who needs a story !

Rajni is a scientist who’s spent 10 years designing an android robot and succeeds (sources of funding not clear at all). He does it while ignoring the ample charms of girlfriend, Aishwarya. However, when she meets Chitty (the Robot’s name, a Rajni look alike), her anger vanishes and she is totally charmed. And so is the Robot. In an interesting development, and one which I wish had been developed better, the robot falls in love with his creators girlfriend and starts to compete with him for her attention. Thanks to a lightning strike, he also develops feelings and during an army testing scenario (apparently the purpose for which he was created), he starts spouting poetry instead.


Rajni, extremely upset, breaks the Robot up into pieces. Evil scientist / competitor, Danny, picks Chitty up and makes him whole again and also makes him a destructive machine. The evil Chitty now begins to hatch revenge against Rajni, kidnaps Aishwarya, blows up half the city and kills half the cops. What will happen next ?


I’m not even going to go into story flaws. They’re just too numerous and I could fill 3-4 pages just on them. The enjoyable moments, while not enough, are definitely quite a few. The first fight scene is really comic and entertaining, especially the whole angle of ‘Devi Ma’ and the women ululating. The song ‘Naina Mile’ made more sense in the film than just the video, particularly the shots of the inner portions of the Robot coming alive. Some of the locales were stunning with special mention for the desert scenes in the first song (along with the water bodies, it looked out of this world). And of course Machu Pichu, though, why they were singing ‘Kilimanjaro’ there, beats me.

The special effects at the end (in a very long drawn out climax) were fantastic. The different formations done by the robots were truly visionary, imaginative and never before seen in the best sci-fi movies.


With a little bit more effort, better structuring though, this movie could’ve become a worldwide phenomenon. It had one of the biggest stars of the Indian film industry, the world’s most beautiful woman and some brilliant special effects. With just a little more vision it could’ve been brilliant. As of now, it’ll have to just settle for being above average, but only just…