The Legend of Drona

It can be called the game of destiny or the Karmic circle that some people get all the resources, the backing and ready setup to make a huge movie and from the inside they are not the masters of the medium. On the other hand there are immensely talented people (directors and writers) who have all the potential of delivering a Hit but they never get a chance of proving themselves. Here destiny plays more important role than talent, I suppose. Why I felt this way after watching DRONA ? Here is the answer…

If we take into consideration the budget of DRONA and instead of making "Drona", we spend that money on 10 different small budget films giving break to new talents, then I am sure all the 10 films will come up with something interesting. A few may be exceptions, but they all will be able to recover the cost and may also generate profits by selling all kind of theatrical, satellite and digital rights.

But spending such amount of money on a dull, uninteresting and poorly executed project like "Drona" is out of my understanding. In fact in my opinion if any intelligent businessman would have seen the rushes of this movie half way, then he would have decided to shelve the project right there. I am a loyal Bachhan fan, but I feel sad to say that this is the most deadly or the worst choice of project from Abhishek Bachhan. May be he relied too much on his childhood friend Goldie Behl, the director of the movie, who could not deliver the goods for himself and his friend.

Drona simply fails to generate any kind of interest right from the start. You can feel the restlessness, the giggles and the noises in the theater just after 15 minutes of the movie. There is no definite plot and it keeps on dragging with costly and well executed digital effects. Interestingly all the special effects seem to be inspired from the "Mummy" series movies. The sand storm, the faces in the sands all look familiar. Abhishek tries to give an intense performance but doesn't have a well written role for him. Both the writer and director seem to be confused in what to make, a fantasy movie, a super hero movie or a super girl movie.

The annoying fact is that Priyanka Chopra looks more convincing and gorgeous in her super girl get-up than Abhishek as Drona. May be the film would have been far different and better if it was made around Priyanka as a super women. Jaya Bachhan has nothing to do in few scenes she has got, but as always she looks elegant. A complete mis-cast is K.K. in the role of evil villain. He tries to be funny and cruel at the same time but fails to impress. For the first time I felt K.K. was not doing his part with full spirits.

The script has not got any mention of a special time period. It keeps on shifting to different time spans with sudden jumps ignoring any continuity. However I made a keen notice for the work of Art Director. The fantasy sets and the mysterious city set in the second half was so childish, in bright colours like newly painted and was clearly visible that they were made out of cardboards and stationary materials. The sets were not impressive at all as compared to the special effects. Musically, nothing to mention as all songs were uninspiring and unwanted as per the script and demand of the subject. In the first half the songs disturb rather than entertain.

Only a night before, I heard the people from the Industry praising the movie at its premier in Mumbai. Now after watching it, I can only come to a conclusion that Abhishek has not got good, sincere and true friends around him. If there had been a true friend then he would have told Abhishek straight, that this is your latest grand mistake of making a wrong choice and please don't rely on it. Forget it as soon as possible. And I can bet that Amitabh, Jaya and Aishwarya, all being intelligent & experienced film personalities, knew at the back of their minds that this is not gonna work.

Last Words : The only worth watching thing in Drona is, the fight sequences by gorgeous Priyanka Chopra in a well suited get up.

Dear Goldie, I know you or one of your agents will read these boards to get feedback on the film. So I am addressing this to you personally.

Let me summarise my personal sentiments for your film: it made me cringe, it embarrassed me, it made me laugh at it's stupidity, not a kind of good laugh, more of a laughing with disgust. I was also very bored and waiting for the film to end. Had I not been watching it with family and friends, I would have walked out.

As I am talking to a director I am going to give you feedback on each aspect your film fails on and and suggestions.

STORY: I read in your interview on how this story was so special to you. Perhaps you should have submitted your script to a script doctor before submitting to your producers. It seemed like it was your first draft It was one of the worst scripts I have had the misfortune of seeing recently and I nominate it personally for the Bollywood Razzie awards. Your whole setting is fake and unconvincing; none of your characters are developed; the story is not thought out. You know I seriously got the impression that what you did was watch a few dozen Hollywood fantasy films, pick and mix whatever you liked and made a collage, not a film.

All you did was lift the common Hollywood quest story for immortal elixir, plastered Indian names on it, and called it Indian. Riz Razada seems like a reject from a c-grade Hollywood film. Everything about him, his look, his mannerisms, his lair, his henchmen are completely foreign.

Your super hero is a moping loser. The first thought that came to my mind was when I saw your superhero was, "No, seriously, this Cinderella-man is the superhero" but I gave you a chance. I figured you were going for the loser realised hes special plot. In actual fact it turned out into the superhero with special needs plot. In the beginning he is looked after by a flower petal! He is saved by a woman who has more testoterone than him; in the later parts he turns into a mommy's boy who gets walked over left, right and centre and in the end he get killed - oh and then saved by a dues-ex-machine with him suddenly coming alive again despite being impaled by a sword.

Your superhero was pathetic. A passive pushover that just grunts and makes ugly faces, and to make matters worse looks absolutely ridiculous in his costume, displaying Mr Bachchan in the most unflattering light. He never actually earns any credit as a hero - let alone a superhero.

DIRECTION: If your screenplay deserves a Razzie, so does your direction. You totally destroyed the film.

The excessive and monotonous use of slow motion. It became so frequent it was predictable. Every time the hero appears, cue slow motion and take several shots from every angle of the hero posing with his sword raised making angry faces(which is what the hero ever did) Tacky costumes and sets rejected from a Hollywood film. I don't think you even thought about how UGLY and fake the sets and the costumes looked. They were also very boring and empty. I wondered where were the people in your film, and when you had people such as Rizada's fans, you made them look ridiculous too. Then we also the ridiculous Gandalf-caricature in the end. I know what you were thinking, because it is a fantasy film you can go all-out with the bizarre, but this just betrays what an amateur you are. A fantasy film is not an excuse to make everything look ridiculous. That only reveals your lack of thought that went into making film.

SPECIAL EFFECTS: The special effects are as crude and underdeveloped as everything else in your film. You should have at least got this right, this was your trump card. At least you could have won the tag, "Great special effects, awful film" instead you win the tag, "tacky special effects, awful film" What is worse that despite having such tacky effects you flaunt them. The beginning with Rizada cloning himself looked like it was from an 80's film. The electricity effects looked laughably out of date. Perhaps you should have consulted the SFX technicians on the other Bollywood turkey Love Story 2050, they at least got the electricity effects to decent standards.

The car-chase scene with some cut-in shots of a CGI car looked like they were from an older racing computer game.

The particle effects looked like they were the test version of The Mummy. The sand storm faces in particular were very crude.

Other graphics look decidedly video-game graphics.

You said the special effects had been in post-production for a year and you hired Hollywood technicians. Then why do you such sub-standard results? Did you lack the budget, the experience, the software? Somebody is going to have to explain why the effects were so substandard. Again, why did you have to lift special effects? What is wrong filmmakers of your ilk?

SONGS: I am not going to say too much, they are like everything in your film, awful and misfits.

ACTING: Well, you might have actually destroyed Abhishek Bachchan and Kay and Kay's acting career

In short Golide, don't be surprised if you are nominated and win for nearly every category at the Bollywood Razzies this year. A really pathetic film that would have been rejected by virtually every Hollywood producer even at the script stage. Bollywood producers are going to have become more discerning. Nobody wants to watch such rubbish. I doubt you will get funds for a sequel, this franchise is not going anywhere.

A combination of a terrible film, sleep deprivation, my drivers holiday (Eid) and a couple of beers forced me to walk out of the film within 25 minutes. I had the same kind of foreboding within 5 minutes of the start as I had in Love Story 2050. The story, dialogue, acting, characters were all so terrible, poorly drawn out, stereotypical that I just couldn't bear to watch this one fully I walked out just as Kay Kay, who plays the villain, was introduced and hearing his hammy dialogue proved to be the straw that broke this camel's back. Subsequently, my wife, brother, mother etc watched it fully and assured me I did the right thing. Even the two points are only for the special effects that I didn't see (copied from a slew of Hollywood adventure films) and for Priyanka Chopra (who's entrance also I sadly missed).

Apparently Goldie has already decided that he's going to do a sequel. He may have trouble finding someone to bankroll it this time. Sorry for copping out, but I took instinctive evasive action just as a batsman instinctively dodges a bouncer to the head.

More reviews at Apurvbollywood at blogspot.

firstly I would like to recommend IMDb- the site to have separate rating scheme, where films such as this can be rated in negatives.

my plot -

On an unfortunate evening, I decided to watch DRONA. God what wrong had I done for you to not stop me? Well as fate would have it I went ahead and bought a ticket for this master piece of a film. To make it worse i made a friend of mine to travel 4 hrs in traffic to come and watch this movie with me.

we went in with no expectations. i don't like to go cinemas with a fixed head. i like to let the film surprise me... and yes it did...

Fortunately I missed the first 5mins of the film. The film began with terrible blue petal flying into a house, a stupid kid fooling around with it and an uncle who only has a cameo of few seconds. Of course you remember the spider-man and his old man. this uncle does not say much and gladly dies soon without any significance of any kind. Cruel aunt and mean cousin brother are incharge of Drona's life. Priyanaka Chopra is secretly protecting the so-called protector of the universe.

One day and damn foolish magician finds that DRONA is alive and he has the access to ELXIR. But before the magician can find Drona... Drona has to find himself? how philosophical? he figures out that he is a prince of some ruined land in India and he has a mother who is dressed distastefully as it can be. He father died of getting drowned and he is now responsible of saving the elixir from getting into wrong hands..

The magician comes and exploits the maa beta angle. the Drona decides to give him the elixir for the life of his mom. now how brave is it ?

and then a whole lot of confusing and frustrating events happen. in the end Drona kills the villain.... are we expected to be surprised???

Acting was the worst... i think AB Jr can take acting coaching from Himesh. Priyanaka, looked neither hot sexy or ugly... KK... poor him.

In all the film is a total humiliation of the audiences. Making movies such as this film should be considered terrorism.

To those folks who haven't watched this movie....please do NOT watch this movie. The thing which i do not understand IS that why do Indian directors lack the vision and imagination required to make a fantasy movie!!! I can't even give the movie some credits for a nice attempt because a decent attempt would have resulted in the movie ten times better then this one!! ZERO IN ACTING...ZERO IN COSTUMES...ZERO IN ANIMATION..ZERO IN ORIGINALITY..and the sets look so artificial that even a 2 year old can tell the difference.

There should be an option of rating 0/10 on IMDb,b'cause this movie deserves a BIG 0.