Robot (Part 1)

Robot AKA "Endhiran" is a Tamil film by S. Shankar. This is an Indian film so I guess its safe to call it a Bollywood picture. Last time I checked, Tamil was a province in southern India. Anyway, its science fiction. Its a movie about a scientist named Dr. Vaseegaran who creates an incredibly human looking android. Hilarity ensues, at least, for a while. Let me break it down. Spoilers incoming needless to say.

Dr. Vaseegaran has been busy researching and building his own android apparently without any funding from any government or entity. With the help of his two comic relief assistants, he creates "Robot"...the titular robot. That's his name. Robot. Let's move on.

Eventually we learn the doctor has a girlfriend named Sana (played by the beautiful Aishwarya Rai) who he's been ignoring for a while due to his work. She whines about it. Gee, building a super advanced humanoid, the likes the world has never seen, must be hard work. Doc brings the robot home to show it to his parents. Doc asks his mom to name the robot. She names it Chitti Babu. I snicker for five minutes. She then asks Chitti to "throw on" the TV. Of course, Chitti can't understand slang and smashes the flat screen to a thousand pieces. Oh, I get it. He's a robot! He takes things literally! Ha ha! Later on, Chitti winds up slashing a corrupt cop who asked him for a "cut"! Ha ha! But seriously, that was a little screwed up.

The doctor confronts Sana and they talk about their relationship. Some sappy romance scene happens and they make up I guess. Then, all of a sudden and without any warning whatsoever, the scene inexplicably shifts to the middle of a desert oasis where the doctor is strumming a guitar. He and Sana sing and dance while the winds blow around them and the camera flies around. Oh yeah, Indian cinema baby! Her costume even changes a few times.

Doc brings Chitti to the "International Robotic Conference" and everyone is impressed except Dr. Bohra, Dr. Vaseegaran's mentor. Immediately you could tell Dr. Bohra is a villain. He looks like a complete asshole. He's envious. It turns out that Bohra had been attempting to create androids of his own but his pupil had succeeded where he had failed. He attempts to ask Chitti to reveal its secret neural programming scheme but fails. Also, Dr. Bohra's androids look like assholes too so you know this guy is trouble. His androids have mean faces with angry brows and a gunmetal black color scheme. He might as well wear a shirt with the word "villain" written on it.

Anyway, Sana wants to "borrow" Chitti for a while and Doc agrees to trust her with an extremely advanced machine for some reason. Hilarity ensues. A music video/montage of how awesome Chitti is commences. Chitti can do anything. He can cook a five star breakfast, clean up the house in a minute, take care of those jerks from the male dormitory and etc. He even helps Sana cheat on her exams using holographic imagery! She get's away with it too! Damn! There's also an over the top action scene where Chitti saves Sana from a band of thugs on a train. It's awesome.

Doc prepares Chitti for his evaluation in some kind of board for AI research. Dr. Bohra is there looking pissed. So far so good until Dr. Bohra tests Chitti. Doc tells Chitti to follow Bohra's orders so Chitti walks backwards, runs around, jumps to and fro, attempts to stab Doc - oh shit! Chitti was nearly "tricked" into stabbing Doc. Dr. Bohra smugly snorts that Chitti cannot distinguish good from bad and friend from foe so he cannot be used by the military. Doc goes home disappointed and the board walks out. Jeez, you'd think the fact Chitti even exists would be a milestone. These people are hard to impress.

On the way home there's a fire downtown. Doc orders Chitti to save people. Chitti saves a few but something unfortunate happens. He saves a girl who was naked in a bath tub without clothing her first. Now, call me crazy, but I think saving your life is more important than being caught naked in public but I dunno, it could be a cultural thing. The girl is so shocked at being naked, she runs away and gets smacked by a truck. Everyone is mad at Chitti for saving her goddamned life in such an insensitive manner. Geez. Anyway, the Doc decides that he's going to teach Chitti morals. He's gonna teach a robot morality. Wow.

Doc goes over some charts on human relationships, tells Chitti to memory scan psychology books and even installs some pheromone detecting hardware but it seems Chitti can't seem to understand. Now personally, I think that its impossible to teach a machine emotion. Emotions can't be broken down into a program. Life is much more complex than - a what the hell, Chitti gets struck by magical lightning. Problem solved.

Chitti learns to feel which is quite amazing. Chitti manages to save a baby too. Sana is so impressed by this, she kisses Chitti and you know where this is going. The villain even remarks, "The story is just beginning!"

The movie goes into intermission and that's all for now.