Email
Print
ShareFilm: Drona
Director: Goldie Behl
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra, Kay Kay Menon, Jaya Bachchan
Rating: * and a half
Every time Sonia (Priyanka Chopra) starts a sentence with "Bhauji ne kaha thha", you want to scream! This 'bhauji' has entrusted his daughter Sonia, and a group of funny, foreign junior artistes who utter Hindi dialogues like 'Bhag jaow, bhag jaow', to keep an eye on and protect Aditya.
Orphaned as a kid (you are made to believe so initially), Aditya lives with his adopted parents and their son Roger, and is being protected by these nutcases, unknown to him, since he was a little kid. Fresh from trying to sue the makers of Hari Puttar, for borrowing their title from 'Harry Potter', Warner Bros would not be too happy to set their eyes on Drona. It's the whole concept that's been borrowed/ stolen/copied here!
After a few terribly over-the-top scenes where Aditya's step-mother says stuff like 'manhoos' and 'pishaach' to young Aditya, the story takes a leap forward where Aditya is now a fully-grown, bearded hunk (read: Abhishek Bachchan), but someone who behaves like he's still 12. Between sulking about how he has no family and singing a completely out-of-place, badly tuned title song, Aditya talks to SFX-created blue leaves.
Which is fine up to a point, but when a wrist band appears in Aditya's wardrobe out of nowhere and Aditya looks at the leaf and exclaims happily 'Mere liye!?' you know there's something awfully wrong with the guy. You are told that the band is actually a 'divya kadha', or something like that. Encrusted with fake-looking diamonds, the ornament looks like it has been picked up from chor bazaar. Most of the props in this film look similar.
Aditya is actually Drona, or the protector of Amrit: the nectar of immortality. For centuries, a Drona in each generation has protected the Amrit with his life. Aditya's father was killed by a demon in the body of an eight-year-old magician Riz Raizada, who is now looking for Aditya, the only one who can lead Riz (Kay Kay) to the Amrit.
Aditya, of course, is unaware of his origins and it takes an animated comic-book style flashback of events narrated to him by his estranged mother (Jaya Bachchan, doing a K3G all over again and breaking into the highly irritating 'Nanhe Munne' song) that makes him realize his true identity. Then, there's pretty much no stopping this supposedly new-age sci-fi, supernatural, inspired and abused story, treated like a ninetiees' hamfest.
The movie, funnily, reminds you of Toofan, the elder Bachchan's sci-fi damp squib in 1989. Abhishek would want to forget Drona quicker then Amitabh did Toofan though. In the role of the super hero (even though the makers have been crying hoarse it's not a superhero movie), Abhishekh is extremely ill at ease. With a perpetual scowl and a personality that fails to capture your imagination in the regal Drona costume, Abhishekh disappoints. Coming after his super-competent performance in Sarkar Raj, this one's a big letdown.
The other principal actors seem as clueless as the film's intentions. Kay Kay Menon's Riz Raizada is hardly menacing, for no fault of his. The actor tries his best to infuse some life into a shoddily written villain, which could easily have been sidekick to Mogambo. There's also Devdutt, the horse, which looks old, haggard and hardly elegant. The props seem to have been used from the producer's television serials, just like most of the other actors. The SFX, in most scenes, is actually quite impressive - but all it tends to do is make Drona look like a beautiful body without soul.
The efforts of the makers have to be given some due. Although Drona is more a bits-and-pieces 'inspiration' of a host of Hollywood films, including Lord Of The Rings, The Mummy and mostly the Harry Potter series, you have to give it to Goldie Behl and his team to attempt a story of this magnitude.
In the end though, Drona's scale is its biggest undoing. Overambitious, Drona is a setup of actors, creators and technicians that has tried to do something too big for its boots. Even 'Bhauji' would agree.
