Genre: Animation/War/Fantasy/Action/Drama
Starring (voice): Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgn, Vidya Balan, Sunny Deol, Jackie Shroff, Anupam Kher, Shatrughan Sinha, Anil Kapoor, Deepti Naval, Manoj Bajpayee
The Mahabharat is being credited to be the longest epic poem in the world and when a story of such scale and grandeur, a story that lays the foundation of a religion and hence a society of billions of people is remade into a movie, justice needs to be given. Touted as being the most expensive animated movie to come out of Bollywood, it is no doubt that the audience has modest expectations from it. Bhishma Pitamah (Bachchan) is the mentor or custodian of the throne of Hastinapur. His eldest son, Dhritarashtra was blessed with a 100 sons who were collectively called the Kauravs and his younger brother, Pandu was blessed with 5 who were called the Pandavs. Unfortunately since Dhritarashtra was blind, Pandu ascended the throne of Hastinapur and after his death the throne was handed over to his eldest son, Yudhishtir (Bajpayee). Duryodhan (Shroff), the eldest son of Dhritarashtra was of the opinion that he is the rightful prince to the throne and in order to avoid a fight between the brothers, the kingdom was divided in two halves for each of the princes'. Jealous of his brothers popularity and success, Duryodhan continued to plot against the Pandavs which ultimately led to the battle of Kurukshetra, a war that saw both sides battle it out for the ultimate victory. With a strong cast that covers almost every credible actor in the industry, it is extremely disappointing that no attention whatsoever seems to have been given towards the movies animation. It suddenly seems as if one is watching a movie made 15 years ago with rigid animations, imperfect movements and an overall lack of finesse. A stark contrast to the botched animation is the superb special effects that stand out from the rest of the movie, even though it is used sporadically. Condensing such a long story for a 2 hour movie is a challenge and the makers have been successful in highlighting all the major aspects of the story but yet they seem to be situations that have simply been pieced together with no flow or connect to each other. Major aspects of the story were identified and glued to one another without any concern for logic and maintaining a fluid story. The background score is loud and powerful but the overall lack of finesse in executing the action sequences does not seem to compliment what you hear. The audio does not seem to agree with the visuals and hence look completely out of place. The movie was made to target children and explain to them in a simplified manner the story of Mahabharat. Whilst the movie might achieve this target with the audience it is trying to reach out to, had the animations and overall development of the movie been better, it could have been appreciated by a wider audience which would have worked in the movie's favour ultimately. To be watched only if you have someone younger than 10 years accompanying you, else avoid this at all costs.
Thumbs up: A decent attempt at reaching out to the younger audience
Thumbs down: Bad animation and an overall lack of finesse in the storyline
Rating: 5.3/10
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