I see that only people from India has reviewed this movie yet, and generally, they all liked it. However, I am not from India, and I didn't like it much.
I don't know if my opinion only a matter of cultural difference, or is there something beyond that, but i assume it's the later.
When I saw it at the Animaton festival at Annecy, there were a tremendous hype around it. There was even a kind of wager about it. It seemed as the movie makers were really prod about their work, and wanted us to see them as the pioneers on Indian cartooning, which has (thanks to them) became a cultural force to reckon with...
On the other hand, one of my friend told me, that this movie is beyond horrible, and I will leave the screening before the the film reaches it's half.
...
Well, since I trust my friend more, than strangers at wagers, I had really bad expectations when I actually decided to watch this movie. ..but it wasn't all that bad! I wouldn't call it good, but I'v seen much worse! Unfortunately still, this movie is pretty bad, somewhat beyond mediocre. Don't forget that I'm talking from an European point of view, so there might be some cultural references I just didn't get. But there ARE some things you can measure to international values. I'm only gonna talk about those things.
What did I expect when I went to the screening? A lush, exotic looking film, with a storyline that might make sense, but I surely wont understand due to major cultural differences. What did I get? A film that looks like crap, with an understandable plot which however doesn't make any sense.
Really this film looks as it has been designed and animated by Jetix channel animators. And if you know Jetix, you know it has pretty low standards. This is just inexcusable in a full feature movie. The 2d and 3d parts doesn't blend well, the editing is boring and uninspired. That's especially true for the action sequences. I mean, come on!!! A matrix spoof in 2007 ?! And a so badly executed one! The character designs could also be better, they're generic, boring, and looks as if they were made for separate movies.
The story consists from way too much story lines and characters, and none of them has enough time to develop properly. There is a little boy, who's getting his ass kicked by bullies, there is Hanuman, a monkey-looking god, who transforms into a little boy, to help out the earlier little boy, and later on they discover some mafia activity, and there is a war going on between heaven and hell, and there is some sort of a natural disaster at the end, due to pollution. Again, less would be much more. And all these lines trigger some totally unimportant characters with needless roles (for example, Ghandi makes a really out of place cameo. That's another problem, none of the puns and spoofs blend into the story well enough. At most of the jokes, I could almost feel the director nudging my side and winking at me saying: "hehe, good one! get it?") The story is followable, but falls apart due to the lack of a proper editor and scriptwriter, who should've CUT the movie heavily. If they'd have cut the majority of spoofs and at least two of the plot lines (or add two more to make it even wackier), this would be a really good family movie.
I still say, there might be vast amounts of cultural reference I missed out, since I don't live in India. But that's exactly the point! I saw this movie in France, at an international animation festival! The movie makers seemed WAY too overconfident about the international release of their work. It falls short on international expectation. This is just not enough to make us notice Indian animation. It's not a bad start (way better than for example " a Fox's Tale " which were also made to international release, but flopped everywhere, with a good reason), and I'm really looking forward to upcoming Indian animated movies, but it's gonna be a long, and hard road until Indian animation reaches the level of international recognition.
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