रामायण: द एपिक

A lovely epic turned into 90 minutes of torture. Don't get me wrong: there are a couple of nice things about the film: the scenery is actually decent, the colours are rich, and the music is acceptable. But pretty much everything else makes the film unwatchable. CGI animation in this 2010 movie is very poor, unbelievably worse than in the first full-length computer-animated film ever, the 1995 Toy Story - as if the studio was unable to catch up with the 21st century techniques. Characters have no emotions, no facial expression is visible in what one expects to be a rather emotional story. Faces are flat, as if cut out of those colourful kitsch posters sold on Indian bazaars. Storyline itself is chopped and inconsistent, the viewer has to know the fable beforehand in order to get who's who. Awful dialogues, or rather exalted declarations thrown out in the air, do not help in making the characters resemble live beings. As someone familiar with the story, after watching this production I am left with a bad taste. I regret because I wanted to show the film to my kids - but have now decided to wait a couple of years for a watchable production.