REVIEW 4: ASHOKA THE HERO

Release date: January 7, 2011

Director: Gaurav Jain

Cast: Voices – Even the movie’s official website has not thought it fit to list their names!

Okay, I’ll make short shrift of this one. Ashoka The Hero is an animation film about an eight-year-old boy in Mumbai whose brave police officer father is killed in a bank robbery. He’s a regular good kid who does his homework and goes out to play only with his mother’s permission. Then one day his old neighbor Masa tells him the story of how Emperor Asoka, saddened by the deaths he caused in the Kalinga war, had summoned nine wise men from across the world to capture the powers of the sun in a medallion. Dunno why they did it, really. But they did. The medallion is to be handed over to its rightful owner by the emperor’s loyal lieutenant Masa when the time is right. And of course the chosen one, many centuries later, is little Ashoka in modern-day India.

Blah blah blah!

So much rubbish is churned out these days by people who think that if they throw in “destiny”, a “rightful owner” or a “chosen one” into a story, they’ve got a Harry Potter / Superman / Spiderman / Batman / LOTR on their hands. The makers of Ashoka The Hero shame themselves further by lifting their hero’s look straight from Superman, even showing him suspended vertically in mid-air with one leg slightly bent in the manner of Christopher Reeve, as he watches over his city.

The animation looks dated, the movement of the figures is stodgy. Good Indian animation films are hard to come by, but an overall low standard can hardly be an excuse! The recent Ajay Devgn-Kajol starrer Toonpur ka Superhero did a pretty neat job of its mix of live action and animation. And director Anurag Kashyap’s Hanuman Returns was laudable both for its visuals and storytelling. Ashoka The Hero, on the other hand, looks like it was made during the Kalinga war.

Rating (out of five): Forget it!