Today we watched the most expensive Asian movie ever made. It is called Robot, and it is Bollywood at its finest. It cost something like 126 crore ($29 million) to produce, and it has the greatest male and female Tamil actors in it. The hero, Rajinikanth is basically a god in India; before movies with him in it, people build and burn fires in the theatres. The heroine is Aishwarya Rai, who was Miss World in 1994 and is still the most beautiful Indian I have ever seen (and there are a lot of beautiful Indian women around). The film was produced in Tamil, but we saw it dubbed in Telegu. Which was only India for you, because the town we saw it in speaks Kannada. It was 3.5 hours long, and if you can imagine a movie that combines Iron Man, Star Wars, I Robot, Transformers, and about 14 other robot/electronics/action films – even Spiderman, you can start to get an idea of what it was like. The film was shot all over India (example: in once scene they go to a barbershop. That barbershop is in Jaipur. It is the only scene in Jaipur, but for some reason they felt the need to travel to Rajasthan to go to that barbershop) and there were songs shot in Goa (western Indian coast), the U.S., and – get this – Macchu Picchu. Yes, in Macchu Picchu they were wearing feathers and singing a song in a clicking language. Would that ever fly in an American movie? No way José. But Bollywood can get away with anything…during the movie, you’re taken for a ride. But it’s fun, it’s thrilling. It’s only afterwards that you sit, stunned, when you realize, “Was Chita speaking mosquito?” “Did ha robot really just deliver a baby?” and your mind is baffled by this beautiful, bizarre culture we call India…it was almost as much of a learning experience as our day’s field visits ;)
I'll hopefully be bringing a copy back with me...but in the meantime, you can watch the trailer here.
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