Kathmandu :

Krrish (Sci-Fi)

Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Priyanka Chopra, Rekha, Naseerudin Shah, Punit Issar, Sarat Saxena

Direction: Rakesh Roshan

Showing at GK7

Bollywood yet seems unprepared to step off its stomping ground as it takes a quantum leap into the not so trampled territory of sci-fi flicks. Long back when Marvel comics turned its franchise into films, it set trailblazers at the Hollywood box-office. But when the selfsame trailblazers were given to mend its way the desi way, it either betrayed our expectations or overstepped the line. With Krrish it reiterates that Bollywood still needs to go a long way to romp into something of an avant-garde. Besides riding on the piggybacks of established formulae, the desi version of Superman boasts nothing short of a Splash. Nevertheless, after all said and done, Krrish at least hits you hard enough to make you accept him for once.

In what is hyped to be the Bollywood’s first full-blown sci-fi, the major bummer is its pat logistics and too much reliance on lengthy flashbacks, when the superman fails to put up a sockeroo of a show. And though beefcake Hrithik puts up a commendable show of his daredevilry, even as he hurtles across high-rises and soars up the sky, the director cuts corners when his supernatural powers gets too much for him to handle. However, after a series of losing streaks he seems to emerge robust in a role that bestows him more than his ordinary prowess. We don’t mind even when the stunts resemble stunt sequences from one or the other of the superman series, until we almost abhor it when the director flounders while making Krish stand on his own identity.

Krrish for almost two-thirds of the movie dilly-dallies in a hideout in a remote dale with his overprotective grandmother (Rekha). He only starts playing the Good Samaritan when he meets his dreamgirl Priya (Priyanka Chopra) and follows her to Singapore.

There, not only does he raise money for a local child, but gets prepared for his filial duty of a doting son and rescues his father from the clutches of the megalomaniac scientist Siddant Arya (Naseerudin Shah). And all this only after he takes on the on the mantle of Flash, Superman, Batman, Spiderman — all rolled into one!

What disappoints one is that all this is the blessings of an alien, more than the case of genetic inheritance. If it hadn’t been for Priya, we wouldn’t have cared what Krish was up to. She’s indeed enviable throughout the movie.

Take your children for this movie, they’ll enjoy it.