Drona

firstly I would like to recommend IMDb- the site to have separate rating scheme, where films such as this can be rated in negatives.

my plot -

On an unfortunate evening, I decided to watch DRONA. God what wrong had I done for you to not stop me? Well as fate would have it I went ahead and bought a ticket for this master piece of a film. To make it worse i made a friend of mine to travel 4 hrs in traffic to come and watch this movie with me.

we went in with no expectations. i don't like to go cinemas with a fixed head. i like to let the film surprise me... and yes it did...

Fortunately I missed the first 5mins of the film. The film began with terrible blue petal flying into a house, a stupid kid fooling around with it and an uncle who only has a cameo of few seconds. Of course you remember the spider-man and his old man. this uncle does not say much and gladly dies soon without any significance of any kind. Cruel aunt and mean cousin brother are incharge of Drona's life. Priyanaka Chopra is secretly protecting the so-called protector of the universe.

One day and damn foolish magician finds that DRONA is alive and he has the access to ELXIR. But before the magician can find Drona... Drona has to find himself? how philosophical? he figures out that he is a prince of some ruined land in India and he has a mother who is dressed distastefully as it can be. He father died of getting drowned and he is now responsible of saving the elixir from getting into wrong hands..

The magician comes and exploits the maa beta angle. the Drona decides to give him the elixir for the life of his mom. now how brave is it ?

and then a whole lot of confusing and frustrating events happen. in the end Drona kills the villain.... are we expected to be surprised???

Acting was the worst... i think AB Jr can take acting coaching from Himesh. Priyanaka, looked neither hot sexy or ugly... KK... poor him.

In all the film is a total humiliation of the audiences. Making movies such as this film should be considered terrorism.

This is definitely most boring movie I have seen till date. Though Bachchans are having legendary status as far as acting is concern,but they don't have eye for good script,often miscalculate the effect of script, Drona -very good example of misjudgment by Bachchans.It is said that each and every movie signed by Abhishek first approved by his parents(Amitabh&Jaya).On paper story looks interesting,thrilling,action-packed but on screen its just opposite.

Only positive point in movie is Priyanka Chopra,she leaves her mark by strong performance.In acting Abhishek is very poor as alwayes. For Abhishek acting means blank face with minimal or no dialogs(I think he learned that from Ramgopal Varma in SARKAR). Yet he has to learn the facial expression in front of camera.

Its better to watch "Krissh" forth or fifth time than wasting money,mood & weekend on Drona

...because people will be questioning why they had wasted 2+ hours on this snooze-fest. It is the most boring movie to come out this year. Thank God for giving man the brain to invent the fastforward buttons. The film overuses slow-motions to the extent that even in fast forward mode, things move slowly. The action sequences are pathetically executed and the special effects are tacky (to say the least). Goldie Behl is clearly proving to be one of the worst directors. Abhishek Bachchan wears only two expressions: that of looking clueless and that of...well, to quote a friend, think of a child who just had his toy taken away after which his face reddens before throwing a tantrum. Yes, that's the title character. Jaya Bhadhuri looks as though she really dreaded being a part of the movie and only did it for baby Bachchan's (who's trying to look like a man) sake. Priyanka Thopra acts like a zombie. She's supposed to be this action heroine who wears no expression and does the occasional item-number type dance. The only reason why I bothered with 'Drona' was because of Kay Kay Menon who's one of my favourite actors. I did enjoy his over the top villain act but the character is too much of a caricature. But I'm still thankful for the fast forward button and if the slow motions were reduced to normal speed, the movie would have finished in a good 30-45 minutes...and it would still be boring as I have experienced. Plus, the songs deserve to be fast-forwarded too. The ridiculous ending promises a sequel but I hope the film bombs badly enough to avoid any further torture.

Dear Goldie, I know you or one of your agents will read these boards to get feedback on the film. So I am addressing this to you personally.

Let me summarise my personal sentiments for your film: it made me cringe, it embarrassed me, it made me laugh at it's stupidity, not a kind of good laugh, more of a laughing with disgust. I was also very bored and waiting for the film to end. Had I not been watching it with family and friends, I would have walked out.

As I am talking to a director I am going to give you feedback on each aspect your film fails on and and suggestions.

STORY: I read in your interview on how this story was so special to you. Perhaps you should have submitted your script to a script doctor before submitting to your producers. It seemed like it was your first draft It was one of the worst scripts I have had the misfortune of seeing recently and I nominate it personally for the Bollywood Razzie awards. Your whole setting is fake and unconvincing; none of your characters are developed; the story is not thought out. You know I seriously got the impression that what you did was watch a few dozen Hollywood fantasy films, pick and mix whatever you liked and made a collage, not a film.

All you did was lift the common Hollywood quest story for immortal elixir, plastered Indian names on it, and called it Indian. Riz Razada seems like a reject from a c-grade Hollywood film. Everything about him, his look, his mannerisms, his lair, his henchmen are completely foreign.

Your super hero is a moping loser. The first thought that came to my mind was when I saw your superhero was, "No, seriously, this Cinderella-man is the superhero" but I gave you a chance. I figured you were going for the loser realised hes special plot. In actual fact it turned out into the superhero with special needs plot. In the beginning he is looked after by a flower petal! He is saved by a woman who has more testoterone than him; in the later parts he turns into a mommy's boy who gets walked over left, right and centre and in the end he get killed - oh and then saved by a dues-ex-machine with him suddenly coming alive again despite being impaled by a sword.

Your superhero was pathetic. A passive pushover that just grunts and makes ugly faces, and to make matters worse looks absolutely ridiculous in his costume, displaying Mr Bachchan in the most unflattering light. He never actually earns any credit as a hero - let alone a superhero.

DIRECTION: If your screenplay deserves a Razzie, so does your direction. You totally destroyed the film.

The excessive and monotonous use of slow motion. It became so frequent it was predictable. Every time the hero appears, cue slow motion and take several shots from every angle of the hero posing with his sword raised making angry faces(which is what the hero ever did) Tacky costumes and sets rejected from a Hollywood film. I don't think you even thought about how UGLY and fake the sets and the costumes looked. They were also very boring and empty. I wondered where were the people in your film, and when you had people such as Rizada's fans, you made them look ridiculous too. Then we also the ridiculous Gandalf-caricature in the end. I know what you were thinking, because it is a fantasy film you can go all-out with the bizarre, but this just betrays what an amateur you are. A fantasy film is not an excuse to make everything look ridiculous. That only reveals your lack of thought that went into making film.

SPECIAL EFFECTS: The special effects are as crude and underdeveloped as everything else in your film. You should have at least got this right, this was your trump card. At least you could have won the tag, "Great special effects, awful film" instead you win the tag, "tacky special effects, awful film" What is worse that despite having such tacky effects you flaunt them. The beginning with Rizada cloning himself looked like it was from an 80's film. The electricity effects looked laughably out of date. Perhaps you should have consulted the SFX technicians on the other Bollywood turkey Love Story 2050, they at least got the electricity effects to decent standards.

The car-chase scene with some cut-in shots of a CGI car looked like they were from an older racing computer game.

The particle effects looked like they were the test version of The Mummy. The sand storm faces in particular were very crude.

Other graphics look decidedly video-game graphics.

You said the special effects had been in post-production for a year and you hired Hollywood technicians. Then why do you such sub-standard results? Did you lack the budget, the experience, the software? Somebody is going to have to explain why the effects were so substandard. Again, why did you have to lift special effects? What is wrong filmmakers of your ilk?

SONGS: I am not going to say too much, they are like everything in your film, awful and misfits.

ACTING: Well, you might have actually destroyed Abhishek Bachchan and Kay and Kay's acting career

In short Golide, don't be surprised if you are nominated and win for nearly every category at the Bollywood Razzies this year. A really pathetic film that would have been rejected by virtually every Hollywood producer even at the script stage. Bollywood producers are going to have become more discerning. Nobody wants to watch such rubbish. I doubt you will get funds for a sequel, this franchise is not going anywhere.

A combination of a terrible film, sleep deprivation, my drivers holiday (Eid) and a couple of beers forced me to walk out of the film within 25 minutes. I had the same kind of foreboding within 5 minutes of the start as I had in Love Story 2050. The story, dialogue, acting, characters were all so terrible, poorly drawn out, stereotypical that I just couldn't bear to watch this one fully I walked out just as Kay Kay, who plays the villain, was introduced and hearing his hammy dialogue proved to be the straw that broke this camel's back. Subsequently, my wife, brother, mother etc watched it fully and assured me I did the right thing. Even the two points are only for the special effects that I didn't see (copied from a slew of Hollywood adventure films) and for Priyanka Chopra (who's entrance also I sadly missed).

Apparently Goldie has already decided that he's going to do a sequel. He may have trouble finding someone to bankroll it this time. Sorry for copping out, but I took instinctive evasive action just as a batsman instinctively dodges a bouncer to the head.

More reviews at Apurvbollywood at blogspot.