Krrish 2006

Continuing on after watching Koi… Mil Gaya I finally watched the first actual superhero part of this Bollywood trilogy. But even then the film surprised me to a certain extent as it is still mostly a romantic comedy with a supernatural angle to it where the actual superheroics don’t come into play until around the two hour mark of a three hour film. But where Koi… Mil Gaya had some problematic elements with its romance, there was none of that here and while it also fell into a few sitcom-esque cliches, it was a whole lot more fun to watch. It ultimately turned into an odd combination of Tarzan, Superman, and Spider-Man but it all somehow worked well together. Even the musical numbers were less distracting and felt fewer and further between as well.

This film follows Mil Gaya where the mentally disabled Rohit regained his alien-enhanced abilities at the end and had a child named Krishna. But when Krishna was born, he inherited his father’s abilities but his father also happened to die when he was born and his mother also died from grief so he was left to be raised by his grandmother. When his abilities started showing, she took him away and raised him away from the world in a remote village where he befriended the animals without quite going all the way wild like Tarzan.

What is surprising is how both Krishna and Rohit are played by Hrithik Roshan but they feel like such different characters. While Rohit doesn’t have much screen time in this film, it feels much like how Christopher Reeve separates his Superman and Clark Kent characters. Rohit is much more nerdy, twitchy, and looks much less muscular, while Krishna is played up as a charming piece of beefcake and Roshan handles both roles expertly and is a far cry from Eddie Murphy playing multiple roles or the various generations of Marty McFly.

While it does take a long time to get to the superhero story, the romance in this film is very fun. The meet cute moment comes as Krishna saves Priya after she parachutes into a tree during a ten day adventure camp, then to hide his abilities he convinces his friend and tour guide to play him off as a ghost which includes plenty of silly situational comedy as Krishna keeps appearing in and about the camp until he finally comes clean. But when Priya and her friend Honey return to Singapore, they don’t realize they stayed five days past their allotted vacation time and Honey pitches a story about the super powered Indian boy from the wilderness so they can stay on. The movie then turns into this deception as Priya convinces Krishna to come to Singapore under the pretenses that he needs to ask her mother for permission to marry her before her mother betroths her to someone else. So we get the typical romantic comedy where Priya is using Krishna, but also eventually falls for him for real with plenty of comedic situations like trying to film him racing an Orangutan up a pole while the Orangutan refuses to cooperate.

The superhero angle finally comes in when they visit the circus where a street performer named Christian works that Krishna had met earlier. Krishna had helped out Christian when he saw that he was trying to raise money to help his wheelchair bound younger sister. The origin moment finally happens when a fire breaks out at the circus and Krishna finds a broken mask on the floor and a flashy trenchcoat to create his costume and secret identity, though it seems silly that he went with Krrish which is so close to Krrishna. It would be as if I always went by my name Nathan, but my superhero name was Nate. The outfit itself looks ok, the flashy trenchoat feels quite a bit like Neo with more flash, but the mask works. It looks like a broken mask except that it’s perfectly broken into a slight lightning bolt design. The other element of his superhero identity is that the wind is always blowing his hair and coat tails which becomes hilarious once you start paying attention to it, especially later on in the film where he’s fighting inside a warehouse and there is not the slightest hint of wind on any other person in the fight except for Krrish.

Following up the initial superhero origin story, the film falls back on the romantic comedy as Priya is once again in danger of losing her job and has to come up with Krrish’s secret identity. She uses the time honored trick of hiring some goons to pretend to kidnap her while she has cameras set up to capture Krishna turning on his Krrish super moves, except it doubly goes wrong when Krishna sees the cameras and knows something’s up and the goons happened to be real goons rather than the hired ones. We also get the moment where Krishna finally finds out the entire ruse when he talks to her mother who was never let in on any of Priya’s plan. And at the same time, Priya and Honey find footage from the circus of Krishna putting on the Krrish mask. It is cliche to a certain extent, but for the most part it works.

And on top of everything else, there is an actual supervillain subplot strung throughout the film. Rohit was working on a computer that could see the future. Of course, Rohit was given promises that it would be used for things like preventing disasters and the like, but the head of the company only wanted to use it for personal gain because of course he did. When Rohit tested out the computer, he saw the truth and destroyed the computer just before he was about to be killed. But the computer was wired to only accept Rohit’s biometrics as a password so the villain had to keep him alive for years even though it doesn’t entirely make sense that when his team rebuilt the computer from scratch using Rohit’s notes that it would still have the biometric passwords intact.

As a whole, the film works as a romantic comedy with a superhero angle towards the end. The fight scenes are all choreographed well and even though it has a slower overall pace to it, the comedy helps keep things light. Since this is a Bollywood production, there are some musical numbers, but given that there are only three over the course of a three hour movie it never felt intrusive for someone not used to a Bollywood musical. What really helps sell this film for me was the charm of Roshan as Krishna. I think I would have had a difficult time with this film if he hadn’t gotten the tone of that character right. I do think it helped watching this film after Koi… Mil Gaya to get more background on the characters and it was a fun ride from start to finish, even though it took two thirds of the movie before it really got to the superhero origins. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.