Krrish stars the musclebound and supremely flexible green-eyed hunk Hrithik Roshan as a feral, mountain dwelling superman. He wears the expression of a gay woodland sprite, startled at every turn by his own special powers. He hangs out with a gang of children and his grandmother, a grey haired, bespectacled old lady played by the regal Rekha. Rekha is one of a handful of Bollywood stars so peerless they are identified by just one name (see also Kajol, Sridevi, Tabu). His world is rocked one day by the parachuted arrival of the delectable Priyanka Chopra, former Miss World and entirely inappropriately nicknamed “Piggy Chops” by one of her previous co-stars. She’s meant to be on some sort of camping weekend, but is happy to lark around with Krishna for a bit, especially after he has demonstrated his miraculous powers by curing her sprained ankles with only a touch of his hand. The film thus meanders up to the intermission with Himalayan-backdropped love songs and Hrithik mooning at Priyanka like a 12-year-old who’s just discovered masturbation.
At this point the film takes an abrupt and hilarious swerve as granny, explaining to Hrithik why he shouldn’t visit Singapore to meet Priyanka’s mother and arrange their marriage, describes how the arrival of blue aliens in response to Hrithik’s father’s intergalactic messaging hobby resulted in his combined mental retardation and mysterious supernatural intelligence. Confused? You won’t be. But you will be laughing so much your bowels may fail. The shot of a fully grown Hrithik Snr. seated in a classroom at a tiny school desk surrounded by eight-year-olds, gurning vacantly, will explain everything you need to know.
He was apparently co-opted by a megalomaniac Singaporean businessman, with a God complex to shame every Bond villain that ever tried to rule the world, into creating a computer that could see into the future. But they apparently looked into the very recent past to design the computer, basing it entirely on Minority Report’s flashy, floating, 3D draggable windows. Just like that film, searching for the simplest piece of data seems to involve manhandling about twenty windows around the workspace in various permutations, whereas in today’s actual, real world, many years prior to that envisaged in these films, all we have to do is … type a few words into the Google search field at the top of our web browser. Amazing, isn’t it?
So, Krishna travels to Singapore, wearing the same disgusting grey plastic mac that his father went in (it’s not clear how the mac came to be back up in the mountains with granny, seeing as dad is missing presumed murdered by a crazed technological genius. I doubt he would have taken the time and trouble to ship back to India a coat that even the most perverse of sexual perverts wouldn’t be seen dead lurking in the bushes in. Still, there it is, and granny fetches it out of the attic to make some adjustments for Krishna, presumably having a hefty supply of grey plastic coat material to put patches in with).
There’s the usual bit of business in Singapore with the Krisha / Priyanka will they / won’t they suspense. Of course they will, but various obstacles have to be overcome first.
A key scene occurs when Krishna observes a street entertainer performing kung fu moves, and collecting money for his little sister’s operation (we know this because he has a sign saying ‘collecting for sister’s operation’). During his act he hurts himself. At this point one wonders why Krishna doesn’t just perform his miracle of healing on the performer, his sister, or both. But instead he chooses the more impressive option, namely performing the kung fu moves himself, and handing over a fat wad of cash to the grateful little girl at the end. Ahhh.
The money shot in the film is a huge fire at a circus, where Priyanka and Krishna have gone for a night out. Krishna picks up a bit of plastic from the floor, fashions it into a mask and proceeds to save several children from the burning wreckage. Next thing he knows he’s all over the news, but luckily his mask has maintained his anonymity. Everyone’s asking who’s “Krrish”. Priyanka suspects it’s him, and goes so far as to set up a bunch of actors to “ambush” him, leading him to retaliate, be captured on video, and thus be revealed. But Krishna guesses what she’s up to, and takes a beating to protect his secret identity. Unfortunately, by a massive coincidence it turns out the gang of thugs is actually real, and they’re giving him a walloping. Priyanka, needless to say, promptly regrets her actions and falls in love with him instead, but doesn’t reveal her true feelings, leaving Krrish accusing her of duplicitous exploitation and questionable loyalties and adamant he will return home ASAP.
At this point the boss’s sidekick, who has been hovering sinisterly in the background up till now, tells Krrish not to go home alone – his dad is still alive. We see a flashback to the creation of the future-telling computer, with its unique password based on Hrithik Snr’s retina and heartbeat. He plugs the computer in, does some Minority Report fannying around with widgets and windows, and promptly sees own death played out on the screen in front of him in a sequence almost certain not to be an homage to Don’t Look Now. He destroys the computer, but is caught by his boss before he can escape. In the intervening period they have been rebuilding the computer but, the dolts, they’ve programmed it to have the same password (Hrithik Snr’s heartbeat, remember? Keep up!) as before, necessitating him being kept alive for the next twenty years in a kind of life support machine that looks like something out of Metropolis, only instead of injecting life into a robot it turns a remedial scientist into a gibbering grey-haired Parkinson’s sufferer.
Now, at last, the computer is ready! The boss logs in using Hrithik’s heartbeat, disposes of him and tunes in to his own forecast channel. What does he see? What else, his own death, of course, at the hands of…Krrish! Krrish then turns up, does some fancy jumping around and lands the boss on his arse with a shard of plastic or something sticking through him.
After that they all fly home to the mountains of India, Krrish, Priyanka and fuddy duddy old cardiganed dad – I bet granny’s pleased to see him, thinking about the constant supervision he’ll need not to stick forks in his eyes while Hrithik and Priyanka bugger off to look at rainbows for the rest of their airy fairy lives.
I must admit that at this point I came closer to crying than I have ever done before at a film. Ever. But then he goes into his bedroom and plays some intergalactic space music on his Amstrad and communicates with the aliens, who send a sort of space wink to him through the stars, and I let out an odd sort of gurgling noise and nearly fell off my chair. Sigh.
Lacking any particularly memorable songs, one of the reasons this film succeeds, as so often the case with otherwise formulaic movies coming out of Mumbai, is the romantic chemistry between the good looking leads, Hrithik and Priyanka. Add to this some innovative stunts and pretty competent CGI and there is the beginning of a new franchise here. Roll on Krrish 2!