Not quite Pixar, but nearly there

After a harrowing Saturday that involved poor scheduling and dinner planning and thereby subjecting ourselves to having to suffer through A Good Day to Die Hard, it was with great relish that the wife and I looked forward to watching Wreck-It Ralph on the following Sunday.

I had been following the general positive buzz on the interwebs about the movie, but had successfully steered clear of any major reviews or discussions about it so that I could go in with a completely open mind.

We ended up thoroughly enjoying ourselves, starting from the delightful Paperman short right up till the credits rolled. (One complaint we had here is that we were eagerly awaiting the credits to see the cast of voice actors, but this took far too long in coming as Disney had decided it was more important to credit nearly everyone in the technical crew first.)

I believe with this movie, Disney has finally successfully integrated a Pixar-like quality to their output by incorporating several Pixar-ian touches:

1. Right from the beginning, an animated short as a prelude to the main feature. (Incidentally, fans of Disney -- like me -- will instantly notice the similarity between the girl in Paperman to the Disney princesses, and between the Paperman guy and Mowgli from Jungle Book -- one of my all-time favourite Disney films)
2. The trope of 'make someone want to subvert the status quo in their world' -- toys, cars, insects, monsters, fish, superheroes, and now video games.
3. The animation is distinctly Pixar -- the ray-tracing and rendering appear to have been done using Pixar's RenderMan software.
4. One of the executive producers is John Lasseter (who's come full circle -- he started his career off with Walt Disney, moved to LucasFilm, then Pixar and now back as creative head of both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios)
5. The sound design (which is absolutely gorgeous in this film) is by Gary Rydstrom, also a long time Pixar sound designer.

To echo the good doctor, it isn't Toy Story, but nevertheless, both of us completely loved the film and wouldn't mind going around to watch it again.

Damn you!

Get out of my head!

Race - a metareview

After a long hiatus, the combination of a good night about town with the utter joblessness that one feels while waiting around for a diploma pushed me into attending one of the "New Release!!" Hindi movie screenings that happen on campus.

This movie, as the observant amongst you readers will have noticed, was (surprise!) Race.

Usually, after watching a movie, a good friend and I scrounge through its IMDB and Wikipedia entries to see if we can dig up nuggets about said movie. And if it happens to be a very new one, we look up the reviews online, to see if it conforms with our opinion of the movie.

Our opinion of this movie: BLARGH!

One of the crappiest Hindi movies to have ever seen the light of day, it is rendered worse by the fact that so many otherwise decent actors agreed to work in this craptacular waste of time. Even our joblessness felt cheated!

HOWEVER!

What totally, completely, utterly rocked our sensibilities (even beyond the McKinsey Life Insurance shown in the film!) was the existence of a shocking number of positive reviews this movie was receiving! So I decided to pick through six random reviews, just to bring to light the awesomeness in the perception gaps between different people.

1. 'Race' - An okay entertainer

Starts off well by saying subtlety and restraint aren't exactly the hallmarks of Abbas-Mustaan (how the heck do you spell that second guy's name?!), but then actually lauds Akshaye Khanna on his performance! To be fair though, he wasn't bad, but certainly not praiseworthy. Acting cannot be graded relatively!
They do mention that Sameera Reddy sounds dumb quite convincingly. What they fail to mention is their opinion on whether this is by design or not :-D

2. “RACE” - One of the 10 Best Thrillers

The most shocking review of them all! Its title alone makes one cringe. The entire body of the review is so stuffed with hyperbole, one is actually left wondering if it isn't really poking fun at the movie. The one thing they do get right is a square-peg-in-round-hole reference to Sameera Reddy.

3. Indiainfo Movie Reviews

Another review calling this movie a sure-fire "Best" for 2008 - with the 3rd month in the year not over yet! Worse yet, it goes on to heap praise on the writing and (urk!) the dialogues! The dialogues, incidentally, was unanimously voted as the corniest, most predictable tripe to ever be dished out on-screen, after our screening.

4. Economic Times Review

Finally, sanity prevails! Finally, a review that gives this movie its rightful place in Bollyworld! Finally, somebody gathers up the cojones to look past "dumb", and call Sameera Reddy (in the movie) silly, naive, stupid and irritating!
Only one gripe though: it pans the movie in totality, and then labels it 'not bad'. BZZZT!! Wrong!

5. Rediff: Too many twists spoil this Race

My most favourite review of the lot. Praises Kapoor's "Sanjay Dutt-Musafir" knock-off look, but captures the movie best in two words: vague mess.
Says it isn't objectionably bad, but that's okay, there's not much that needs objecting to.

6. My own review

This one's simple and short: what is wrong with this movie?

Answer:

Not bad? Bah. Avoid at all costs!