Rockstar Movie Review
Janardan [Ranbir Kapoor], born and brought up in the very middle class locality of Delhi, has a larger than life dream — of being a rockstar like Jim Morrison! But all he gets from his reluctant audience is ridicule and humiliation. He’s at his wit’s end, when he realizes that all musical stars, all artists in fact, have one thing in common. And that is tragedy. They all have tragic lives. They have all suffered painful heartbreaks to become what they are. Alas, there is no pain in Janardan’s life. Unless he does something drastic, he will never become a rockstar.
Heer [Nargis Fakhri] is the undisputed diva of the college campus — beautiful, talented, arrogant, rich and unavailable. She has broken many hearts. Janardan hopes she will break his heart too. He sets out to woo Heer with the sole object of getting his heart broken.
ROCKSTAR traces the journey of a boy who leaves behind Janardan to become Jordan, who traverses the highs and lows of life — from simple naiveté to tortured soul, from the campus in Delhi to the international stage… He ultimately gets all that his heart has ever desired, but in the process shatters/loses his heart forever.
It’s evident that ROCKSTAR seeks inspiration for the story from the iconic, charismatic and popular Jim Morrison. With a capable director like Imtiaz Ali at the helm, one expects ROCKSTAR to be a cult movie in this genre. But the film falters after an impressive start, after you are introduced to the four pivotal characters in the story — Ranbir, Nargis, Kumud Mishra [Ranbir's confidante] and Piyush Mishra [owner of a music company].

Rockstar Movie Review
Narrated in flashback, the writing gets erratic as you delve deeper and deeper. The film begins with a few people bashing up Ranbir and one expects the reasons for this fight to come to the fore as the reels unfold. But the sequence remains unexplained even after the movie concludes. Sequences that depict Ranbir’s unpredictable and inconsistent behavior are inexplicable as well. The major mood swings — he’s cool as a cucumber at times, but turns irritable and furious immediately — is also baffling. His relationship with Heer is inconsistent as well. He comes across as an extremely mystified individual. Ranbir’s portions in Prague [including meeting Nargis on arrival there] look unreal. The end to the tale is most worrisome. It’s an open end, with the audience not really knowing what actually happened to one of the central characters. In fact, the second hour is stretched without valid reason and that makes it a tedious watch.
One expects Imtiaz Ali to outshine his previous works, but he doesn’t. Sure, he explores the emotional depths with immense compassion and also draws bravura performances from the central characters, especially Ranbir Kapoor. But let’s not disregard the fact that every film depends on a watertight screenplay and ROCKSTAR stumbles and fumbles in this department. At the same time, there are moments that are spectacular and brilliantly executed. The sequence between Shammi Kapoor and Ranbir [when introduced in the music company office] is super. Ditto for a particular sequence featuring Piyush Mishra; he’s taking a massage and talking to Ranbir concurrently. Even the sequence when Ranbir tears apart the agreement and throws it at Piyush Mishra is fantastic. A few more individualistic scenes reiterate the fact that Imtiaz Ali is a genius!

Rockstar Movie Review
Music maestro A.R. Rahman’s music is scintillating. ROCKSTAR is about the progression of a musician from India and the songs not only tell his story, but also track his journey from a nobody to a somebody. It must’ve been a challenge for Rahman to depict the emotional catharsis a rockstar undergoes and the tracks, I wish to add, aren’t the typical Rahman numbers either. While some of the songs ['Sadda Haq'] will be loved instantly, a few others will take time to grow on you.
Anil Mehta’s cinematography is top notch. Every frame is picture perfect, a painting on celluloid. Dialogue deserve special mention. They are straight out of life.
The secret behind Ranbir’s triumph is that he puts his heart and mind into every project he chooses to perform in. Love, resentment, pain, hurt… Ranbir brings a multitude of feelings to his character. It’s a role of a lifetime and Ranbir is sure to be immortalized in this story of a rockstar. He glides into the character effortlessly, so much so that you see very little of Ranbir, the actor and more of Janardan/Jordan, the character he represents. His performance is beyond extraordinary.
Nargis is a stunner as far as looks are concerned, but isn’t persuasive in poignant moments. However, the chemistry between Ranbir and Nargis is exhilarating. Shammi Kapoor is superb in a small but significant role. Aditi Rao Hydari suffers due to an undeveloped characterization. Kumud Mishra is splendid. What a fine actor! Piyush Mishra is, as always, exceptional. Shernaz Patel enacts her part well.
On the whole, ROCKSTAR does not live up to the confidence and expectations from the otherwise very skilled and accomplished film-maker Imtiaz Ali. The film suffers immensely due to a disorderly screenplay, especially in its post-interval portions. However, the silver lining or the comforting prospect is the virtuoso performance by Ranbir Kapoor and the captivating score by A.R. Rahman, which justify that one extra star.

So what happens before the advent of the superman? You are introduced to a nerdy South Indian stereotype Shekhar (Shah Rukh Khan), his wife Sonia (Kareena Kapoor) and their apathetic son Prateek (Armaan Verma). The father hopelessly imitates Michael Jackson, the mother is doing a Phd on Indian abuses and you don’t blame the son to be uninterested by their goofy gimmickry.

The son wishes to see his diffident daddy as ‘Papa – The Great’. So the father designs a virtual reality game and after detailed tutorials on nomenclature and direction-to-use, the video game’s protagonist and antagonist come to the fore. So much that they step out of the gaming console to battle it out in the real world as G.One and Ra.One. What follows is a ‘Robot- meets-Terminator’ plotline with Ra.One in hot pursuit of Prateek while G.One trying to save him.

It’s certainly not a ‘dream’ start for the film with a tacky video game prologue merely to accommodate starry cameos of Sanjay Dutt and Priyanka Chopra. Not only does director Anubhav Sinha take too long to arrive, the initial proceedings don’t contribute much to the film either. Too much of screen-time is expended on vulgar jokes and tomfoolery. The actual thrill initiates only after the superhero comes into picture and the graph of the narrative soars considerably in the second half.

Though the sci-fi concept seems too far-fetched, the director is able to pull it off with visual dazzlery and fast-paced storytelling that the genre demands. The action sequences are thrillingly and credibly choreographed and esp. outstanding is a freeway chase which leads to car-catapulting sequence in a junkyard at the interval point. The local train sequence in the pre-climax evidently brings back memories of Rajinikanth’s Robot. However, the climactic mortal combat in a simulation setup isn’t as much awe-inspiring and reminds of the climax of Ajay Devgn’s Toonpur Ka Superhero.

Another factor that works against the film is that its title character Ra.One is not half as menacing as it claims to be. Not only is Arjun Rampal inducted pretty late in the plot, being an ‘outcome’ of virtual reality he is too shallow and ineffective as the main villain. And while G.One is delightful, it could have been a lot more endearing. While it’s mechanized avatar and emotionless conduct is again reminiscent of Rajinikanth’s Robot, the South sci-fi packed in much more punch thanks to an eventful screenplay as compared to the Bollywood counterpart which relies too much on SRK’s stardom than the script. No doubt then that Rajinikanth’s one-scene cameo as ‘Chitti’ garners more applause than Shah Rukh wins in the whole film.

The film has a very crude sense of humour and surprisingly the dialogues are more vulgar than witty for a film largely targeted at the family audience. With the theory that anything sells in the name of Shah Rukh, you are served with butt-spanking, crotch-grabbing, cleavage-popping, nose-picking, condom innuendoes, gayish and garish gags. While any other actor doing that would have been tagged as ‘cheap’, girls going gaga over SRK would still like to call it ‘charming’ over here. Kareena Kapoor takes her Golmaal gibberish-abusive legacy ahead. Moreover a SRK film seems incomplete without a karva chauth scene or a K2H2 track playing in the backdrop.

Surprisingly, the ever-dependable Vishal-Shekhar’s musical score never rises above the Akon number Chammak Challo. V Manikanandan’s cinematography is effective. The editing could have been better and the film could have been much crisper in length. Since the film was not actually shot using the 3D technology and is merely converted into the format, the effects aren’t really great and one wouldn’t miss much in the 2D format.

Shah Rukh Khan credibly pulls off the G.One part though irritates occasionally as the nerdy South Indian. Despite being a superhero film, Kareena Kapoor is never sidelined and does decent in her part. Child actor Armaan Verma is less cute and more of attitude. He carries an annoyed expression for a major part. It’s a cakewalk for Arjun Rampal to remain expressionless (in his mechanical avatar) throughout the film. The base effect added to his voice makes his dialogue delivery less perceptible. Amitabh Bachchan’s voiceover in the game’s introduction doesn’t register. The film offers an apt tribute to Rajinikanth though. Shahana Goswami gets no scope. Dalip Tahil makes a caricature of himself.

On the Indian superhero scale, G.One is certainly way ahead of its Krrish counterparts but still miles behind Robot. Nevertheless Ra.One qualifies for a ‘one’ time watch.
courtesy: TOI