RIFLE RANGE BOY

Chennai Express (2013, Bilingual - Tamil/Hindi) Another cheesy typical Bollywood movie that would satiate the appetite of the masses as well as the coffers of the producers - it has set the history of being the highest grosser surpassing '3 Idiots'! It tells the story of a 40 year old sweet merchant (Rahul, SRK, who else) orphan who grew up with his grandparents. His 100 year old granddad dies and to fulfill the deceased's wishes, he has to spread his ashes in Rameshwaram in the southern tip of India. Rahul is upset because it interferes with his grand plans to holiday with his friends in Goa. He tricks his grandma into believing that he is leaving by train when his friends are actually waiting at the next station. Unfortunately, Rahul gets into the same compartment as Meenammal (Deepika Padukone). Meena, the daughter of a villager gangster, is escorted back to her village by her father's henchmen after she tried to abscond from being married off to another gangs...

So now Diwali is officially over, now that we as a family has watched a movie together. This time around it was another Bollywood sci-fi action thriller 'Ra One'. Oh no, another robot movie after the last Chitty's manifestation in Rajnikanth's 'Enthiran'? Well, this time around I did not doze off and action sequences were acceptable as they were all computer generated, hence people take at face value knowing the fights were supposed to occur in cyberspace. Whatever it was, the VW car chase scenes were literally out of this world as far as Bollywood is concerned and were comparable to 'The Italian Job' and 'French Connection' except that all these happened in London with The Thames and London Bridge in the background. All these were too much for some of the patrons who were expecting tear-jerking melodrama and emotional blackmail and they decided to walk out on the show half-way. Guess some were not ready for this transformation in Indian cinema...