Return of Hanuman - The funniest Indian animation film so far!!!!!!!!!!
Rating: 8.5/10
Have you ever noticed how you laugh much more in a group than when you’re alone, especially when it comes to watching movies? There’re group dynamics and identification with other people and other theories, which I claim no intensive knowledge of, to explain this. My point is, the 10 or so of us in Fame Malad were laughing so hard while watching Return of Hanuman, I wonder how things would’ve been if the hall had been full. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard during an animated movie. Shrek and Monsters Inc, I guess.
The first Hanuman was cute, but this one is genius on many levels. Just sample these and you can decide for yourself if it’s your kind of movie:
• Brahma berates Chitragupt when he catches him with his laptop switched to menka.com
• Young Hanuman eats everything in sight and the background song is ‘Paet hai ya black hole?’
• A spying eagle has Mission Impossible-style sunglasses and theme music and sends a fax to Rahu Ketu
• Shukragrah, the planet of demons, has a TV channel called Shukra TV
• A fighting monkey does a Rajnikant style cigarette flip
These are just a few of the many, many brilliant flights of imagination in Return of Hanuman. I don’t need to tell you the plot and I don’t need to tell you about the characters. If you enjoy creativity or comedy, and you don’t have the mindset that animation is for kids, then I’m sure you’ll adore this movie.
It’s very fashionable to criticize Indian animation on the grounds that it’s kind of tacky and doesn’t compare with international stuff like Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Cars, etc etc. But there are very very valid reasons for that. If you want to know, read this very enlightening article, by Anurag Kashyap himself. The article’s called ‘Why Return of Hanuman should be a blockbuster’.
‘Simply because it has to pave the way for bigger better animation movies that can compete on the international level. Return Of Hanuman can’t, because it falls way below the mark. It has got great reviews but largely because the way it unfolds, it entertains, but when you talk quality, it’s lacking. Whose fault is it other than mine? What does it take to make a great animation movie? Time.. the money, because that buys us time, if not time then it buys us more manpower.. Who do we blame for the quality of animation.. You can not blame the animators..Certainly not TOONZ who did the animation, they have done far better work and if you see closely there are bits in ROH that are brilliant.. those are the bits that were done earlier, they took their own time before things were hurried up..’
Do read the full write-up.
It takes a long, long time and a lot of effort and it goes without saying that it also takes a lot of money to produce a quality animation film. Anurag Kashyap says the real hero behind Return of Hanuman is Hari Verma, the Chief Creative Officer of Toonz India. Passion for cinema also has more of the inside story from Hari Verma.
A word for Anurag Kashyap. His scripts and dialogues have always been brilliant, in my humble opinion. Paanch I think lost its way towards the climax, Black Friday is my favourite movie of maybe the last few years, No Smoking I enjoyed although I didn’t understand the underlying allegories, and now, the man who’s given us such brilliantly dark, David Fincher-y movies has let loose his imagination in a happy, extremely funny, animated film! Just goes to show a creative mind can be creative anywhere, whether in Satya or Yuva or Mixed Doubles or Return of Hanuman. Do I need to tell you again to watch it? It’s people like Anurag Kashyap who’re fighting the war against the system and making it easier for everyone to make new kinds of films. Hats off to him the second time this year.
Bottomline:
You might like this film if you like: Tom & Jerry, any Hollywood animation film, Gabbar Singh-Thakur spoofs, the spoofy parts of Om Shanti Om, Sajid Khan’s brand of spoofs.
© Kenny DB., all rights reserved.
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