Ra.One review: SRK can fail too

Shah Rukh Khan's latest film offers no emotional connect with the audience even as its story flops in the telling says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.

On paper the idea must have seemed unbeatable. A gamer creates a kickass game to thrill his son, the evil one breaks out of the game and pursues the son, the father steps in to save the son, and the day.

There are many planes on which the idea must have been appealed to Shah Rukh Khan, the dethroned King Khan of Bollywood (Shocked? But it's true: Aamir Khan has taken over the classes and the collections, while Salman Khan has walked away with the masses).

At the height of Amar Singh's lackies gheraoing his mansion Mannat in Mumbai with the family inside, SRK had said he will do anything to protect his children. I presume when Anubhav Sinha approached him with the script, the part about G.One protecting his son must have leapt out at the actor.

Everyone knows, thanks his media saturation skills, that SRK is an owl who stays awake at night. So does the film's G.One. Notch another one for Anubhav Sinha.

Again, thanks his media saturation skills everyone knows that SRK is a gamer, a geek in Bollywood clothes. So is the (thankfully) short-lived caricature of a hero Shekhar Subramaniam or whatever. Notch yet another one for the director.

In his 40s SRK seems to have entered a maturer, mellower phase in his life. I don't know him, have never met him, my only interaction with him being the once I spoke to him on the phone for an interview for Rediff.com. Thus I base my claim on his last few films – Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, Billu, My Name Is Khan and now Ra.One, where the focus is on the goodness of the self. Like other stars SRK too wants to leave a legacy, but this time for his children, one where the goodness of heart triumphs. It is what his parents left for him and, I suspect, beyond all the wealth he will leave behind this is the legacy he wants his children to treasure the most.

This is a message from our legends as well, so (again I presume) when Anubhav Sinha made his pitch SRK must have felt, what better time to release the film than Diwali, which in the Hindi-speaking parts of the country is celebrated with Raavan's downfall and elsewhere in India with other legends of good winning over evil.

With the basics in place, the challenge would have been to translate the grand vision on to celluloid, after which SRK's money and marketing skills would take over.

Other givens in place like script etc, three elements need to be in sync for a successful film. The director's vision, the lead actor's vision, and the producer's vision. The last is commercial, return on investment, while the first two are creative, and it is essential that the director's vision mesh with the actor's, or at least subsume it.

Ra.One's fault number one, as I see it, was that the director and the lead actor had different visions. The director's vision was to tell his story, and SRK's was to get his 'message' across. Somewhere somehow they did not sync with each other. So at the end of the film, SRK's message comes across, but the story flops in the telling.

Ra.One's fault number two was that there was no emotional connect with the audience. A superhero is out to save the world, the established order which has you and me, members of the audience, in it and we need to feel the urgency