I hate to write a negative review of a movie. Well I have not written any reviews, however "Raavan" forced me to write one. Why? because it involved the biggest of biggest name:
1) Abhishek Bachchan, the glowing shadow of Amitabh Bachchan, growing day by day, improving with each performance
2) Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, the dream woman, beauty personified,
3) Mani Ratnam, the perfect conductor of an orchestra of dreams,
4) A.R. Rahman, I am too small to even think of writing about him,
Four pillars, pillars of strength, still the cinema halls were almost empty. What was it that did not compell audience and pull them to the halls?
My review:
Story: Based on Ramayana, every kid on the block is well versed with Ramayana mostly because of the long tele-serial that everyone has seen and the story being told for decades. What are the changes that anyone cane make to change the story? Why attempt it? People in India are used to seeing, "Mukut dhari Ram" and "Dus mukut dhari Raavan", why change it and no tail to Sanjeevani, cant accept it.
If it had to be adapted, it should have been done carefully. Raavan by himself is known to be a scholar, a powerful person a thorough intellectual. Beera doesnt even come close. Cant write about SP Dev and compare him to Maryadapurshottam. So far said, it is not even close to the original epic.
Casting: Vikram in a Tamil movie is OK. In hindi movie cannot accept. His accent fails everything. His ever nibbling dialogue delivery feels like he is having "Khaini" in his mouth. Abhishek and AIshwarya are the Golden Couple in the Industry, pairing them against each other doesnt make sense, I would rather see She being a mother to him or He being a Father to her, but this portrayal failed completely. We could see the ever flowing love for Abhishek right from the first frame AB and ARB were together.
Dialogues: Very very few. Except for Ravi Kishan no powerful delivery. Wish if Sr B could guide Jr B on the dialogue delivery, I have complete faith he can take this to magnumus level, if he corrects his Dialogue delivery. Beera cannot be delivering dialogues like a Village college guy. Sr B is master of Dialogue Delivery, so much so that even if he doesnt say anything it conveys a lot. His face speaks. Sr B please do something for this. I personally want to see Jr B scale the heights you have scaled. He deserves it he is very very hardworking and he truly Deserves it.
One important thing I noted, if ARB is shown in a tense situation the dialogues seem more like screams, have to be careful, she has a very sweet voice, power can be developed.
Overall I felt, that the locations were awesome, the camera work mind blowing. Music will ring for years but the movie is just going to. infact has melted through.