Force Fed Films: Robot/Endhiran (2010)

This week Puneet had a treat for me! Endhiran, or "Robot" as it's simply titled in English (but good luck finding it with a name like that) is Bollywood's latest blockbuster smash hit. I've heard of it before, and I'll even treat you to the trailer on YouTube. It stars Rajnikanth who has been in a whopping 179 movies! Just look at how many films he was in between 1984-1985! Anyways, this sci-fi film is pretty much a mash-up of Terminator and I Robot, but everyone knows it, and it's clearly different enough from the two that it certainly isn't a direct rip-off. More of my thoughts after the jump!


Having heard about Endhiran before, and even after having seen a few of the actions scenes in clips on YouTube, I was really excited to see this. I had the biggest smile on my face from the goofy absurdity of what I saw in the clips and I couldn't wait for more. What I didn't expect was how much of a story I'd find. It's not necessarily complex, but they could have probably made several movies out of what was on display.

If you think this is bad...

The titular robot is named Chitti, and after Dr. Vaseegaran finishes creating him, they have to teach him how to act like a human. Both the robot and the doctor are played by Rajnikanth. In the process of all his research and studies, however, he has alienated his girlfriend Sana, played by Aishwarya Rai. So first he has to get his girlfriend back. While this is going on, using the robot to help win her back, like letting her use it to cheat on her final exam to become a pediatrician for a major hospital, the robot slowly learns how to kind of act like a person. This is if you consider cheating, lying, and getting in gang fights acting like a normal person. After his "education" is complete, Vaseegaran presents Chitti to the world and both become famous. After a while of fame and living the life, Vaseegaran tries to sell it to the Indian military so it can win all their wars as a one-man army. There is of course a rival robotics company run by Vaseegaran's former mentor....

OK you know what, even I can't sum up this story fast enough. It just goes on and on forever! Needless to say, they teach the robot emotions, it goes crazy, gets dismantled, gets rebuilt, but evil this time, and attacks the city.

The most glaringly obvious flaw in this movie is it's endless, meandering, pointless "Just get on with it already!!" story. The movie clocks in at nearly 3 hours long, and you could probably cut a good 2 hours of it in all honesty. There are so many montages of the robot doing "fun" things like cooking for everyone or cleaning rooms incredibly fast. The section where the girlfriend Sana is just given free reign over this priceless ultimately powerful robot for a few days so she can cheat on her exams takes so long. She just keeps taking it places and having it smash up sources of loud disturbing noise which is stopping her from studying, and then never studies at all. There are so many other examples I could ramble on for a very long time about all the wasted time in this film.

You wouldn't like him when he's angry

So what happened to the smile and excitement I had from watching the action clips? Well by the time those segments came along, I was 2 hours into a 3 hour film. You might notice those clips on YouTube total up to about 8-9 minutes. This is a THREE HOUR MOVIE. Other than the gang fight on the train, those clips have all the action scenes from the whole film. By the time something interesting actually started to happen I was so fed up with it; I just wanted it to be over. I was bored, and tired of the whole thing and really couldn't care less by that point.

One of the many completely random bad music videos slapped into the middle of the movie

One more thing I can't finish without mentioning is the music. This is of course a Bollywood musical. I'm not sure if EVERY Bollywood movie is a musical, but I know a lot of them are, and this is no exception. There were 6 musical segments, if I recall correctly, and I did not enjoy these songs in the least. I have 2 complaints about them. The first is that while the whole movie was subtitled, the musical segments were not, so I had no idea what these 5-7 minute sections were about. The second is that I thought, like most musicals, the songs would be worked into the film, where they start singing and dancing wherever they happen to be and the extras join in. This isn't how it was at all in Endhiran. Basically the entire movie stopped, and it faded into a bad music video for however long the song was, and they were often long. Once it was done, it just resumed the movie.

Pay close attention as he's dubbed over by the real singer. Are they even trying?

Basically, while I really, really thought I was going to enjoy Endhiran, it ended up being a completely disappointing film with horrible pacing, terrible music interludes, a story that just dragged on forever, and very little action. The film is famous because of it's action, and while it is awesome in the most cheesy way, it's a mere fraction of the overall film. I would just like to say the special effects didn't bother me in a negative way, even though they are pretty sub-par sometimes. I was just able to accept that part of it, but there was just so many other terrible parts to the movie. And for a comedy, it certainly wasn't funny, although there could be some cultural barriers in that case.

My recommendation is to watch the action clips on YouTube, but avoid this movie all together. It's largely an utter waste of time, and the majority of the movie just takes away and ruins what little fun you might have from the silly over-the-top Terminator/I Robot homages.