Mildly entertaining but mostly kiddy & unoriginal in its execution.
Grade: C-
Roadside Romeo
Indian Release Date: 24/10/08
CBFC Classification:U
Running Length: 1 Hour 35 Minutes
Cast:(Voices) Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Javed Jafferi, Sanjay Mishra, Suresh Menon, Kiku Sharda, Tanaz Irani, Vrajesh Hirjee
Director:Jugal Hansraj
Screenplay: Jugal Hansraj
Cinematography: Anshul Chobey
Original Music: Salim-Sulaiman
Roadside Romeo is the first full length feature film to come out of the partnership between Yash Raj Films & Walt Disney Pictures. It also happens to be one of India’s first, major, well produced 3D animated flicks. The movie however is just a Bollywood - “ised” version of most animation flicks & I’m not saying that in a positive manner. There are movies like the two Toy Stories or the first Shrek movie or any movie made by Pixar, those have all the technical finesse & the very soul that makes great cinema & with those two combined it makes animation heaven. This movie barely even climbs the first step globally in competing with those giants. It’s more than content to swim in its own mediocrity. The very things that plague most Bollywood productions are glaringly evident here.
Romeo (Voice of Saif Ali Khan) is a dog who’s lived a life of luxury & leisure for a long time & when he is abandoned on the streets by his owners, he finds the going tough. However he soon befriends a group of strays & starts a salon for dogs. He & his buddies soon get into trouble with the local ‘don’ Charlie Anna (Voice of Javed Jafferi), who is in love with Laila (Voice of Kareena Kapoor). Romeo at the same time is trying to woo Laila & this further complicates things for him with the brutish Charlie Anna. Thus he devises a plan to save his skin & a predictable path to the conclusion ensues.
The biggest stumbling block of the movie is the plot. It seems like a mish-mash of the excellent Brit animated flick, Flushed Away (2006), Moulin Rouge (2001) & countless other Hindi flicks. The characters are never properly established nor fleshed out enough for the audience to understand them as anything more than animated beings populating an incredibly fake looking, virtual set. Too much time is wasted in terrible songs with forgettable music & worse lyrics. If the screen time had to be kept around the hour & half mark then a few songs could have been sacrificed to advance the story in some manner or to build the characters. To top it all Yash Raj’s favorite joke in all its recent films is used again, spoofing Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge & you see that spoof coming a mile away. Trust me after so many movies the joke has gotten stale as hell. I know most of this gimmickry is to hold the attention of kids but it just makes the movie seem so hollow. (Most of the kids in the theatre I went to, weren’t even laughing & seemed bored of the proceedings on screen)
The animation is decent enough but nothing extraordinary or in no way comparable to a Pixar or DreamWorks film. The character models are well done over all but the female characters like Laila & the background dancers seem ugly & too bland, rather than appealing. The real culprits in the animation aspect of the movie are the backgrounds & the lighting during the night. The backgrounds throughout the movie do not seem to have any dimension to them & hence seem repetitive, fake & plasticky. The lighting in most of the scenes doesn’t help either & only further compounds the fake traits at places. In certain scenes the characters seem to be lit more than the surroundings, as if they were made of some reflective surface. But as I said before it’s a good sincere effort for a first time & will hopefully get better as we move along.
The voice acting ranges from adequate to good in certain roles. Saif Ali Khan’s forte isn’t his voice but he does good work here as Romeo. Kareena Kapoor is bland & unimpressive as Laila. Javed Jafferi clearly seems to be having a lot of fun as Charlie Anna & gets some of the best lines even though he does get repetitive at times. Sanjay Mishra easily does the best voice work of the lot as Chainu, Anna’s right hand man. His voice seems the best match with his character amongst all the others in the movie. Suresh Menon & Kiku Sharda do a great job as Interval & Hero English. Tanaz Irani & Vrajesh Hirjee are adequate as Mini & Guru. It is the side characters who provide the real laughs & provide a nice little distraction from the two boring main leads & the story.
I’m sure a lot of people would end up watching this movie & it would bode well for the Indian animation industry (there is even a nice little animation “walk-cycle” in joke for animators on one of the banners). However the lesson to be learnt is a simple on that an animation film too at the end of the day is a film & will be judged first and foremost on it’s cinema based aspects & secondly on it’s technical aspects. If the animation lacks the ingredients that make good cinema, then it’s nothing more than an animation demo-reel & then all of the effort put on the technical front will represent only a lost opportunity as it does in the case of Roadside Romeo.
Final Verdict:Roadside Romeo is mildly entertaining but mostly kiddy & unoriginal in its execution.
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