It's not that bad: What could have been better

I have watched it for a second time, and really I did not feel it was a bad movie. Certainly it does not deserve the hatred it is getting. Indian movie goers can be as melodramatic as Indian movies, they exaggerate their emotional reaction to movies, 'This is the worst movie I have seen in my life' or "Shahrukh Khan has let me down?" RA-ONE is a rather good kids kind of movie, but could have had more universal appeal if they made the story more sophisticated. Here are some problems I noted this time around:

1) Too many gimmick-scenes

I will define a gimmick scene as basically a scene that is targetted at the audience where the audience becomes aware that they are somebody watching a movie. The introduction scene with the Bruce Lee girls, Sanjay Dutt and Priyanka Chopra while harmless fun, takes away from the film.
Ditto, the Rajini cameo scene and the fight sequence at the Mumbai station. Again, it was fun, but it took away from the film.
The unstoppabable train sequence, was basically forced in the film after Shahrukh Khan watched Endhiran, but makes no sense in the plot. Why does RA-ONE hypotize Kareena Kapoor's character to hijack a train? Isn't RA-ONE's goal to get Lucifer and his HART back?

2) Very little character and story development

The basic plot of a son who thinks his father is uncool is a good starting point, but it seems writer-director Anubhav Sinha did not want to develop on that any further. He ends up creating characters who are unlikable: The father seems like a clumsy idiot and the son seems like an arrogant spoiled brat. The viewer never quite understands why the father is a such a bumbling fool, why the son dislikes him so much, why does he want to impress him so much.

The son is a high school whiz kid with computers and has loads of attitude. Yet, we do not see any background for the kid. The few scenes of him at school are highly unnatural and again gimmickly to garner cheap laughs.
The father is a brilliant computer programmar and video game designer, yet the company where he works seems like a carticaure. It does not look like a real games lab. The scene with the keys landing in the big bosommed blonde at the entrance to this company is again another gimmick for cheap laughs. Totally unwarranted. The people who work at the company are all carticatures(Jackie Chan wannabe etc)

There is very little exposition on the designing stage of RA-ONE. All the exposition is rushed in some cut-away shots in a song sequence. Shahrukh Khan's character just announces he is going to design RA-ONE - and that blurb is all we get and minutes later RA-ONE is already created. This is also why the viewer had a problem in understanding why RA-ONE can leave his virtual world.
There is absolutely no story arc in how the son(Lucifer) and RA-ONE become enemies. Again, it is rushed in some cut-away shots in a song sequence. Lucifer is already invincible at a game hes never played. Even the best video gamers have a learning phase before they master a game. This makes RA-ONE, the so-called indestructible super-villain look rather weak.

When RA-ONE eventually gets out of the computer game to look for the son Lucifer the film goes into Terminator mode. I would have preferred it remained in Terminator mode, it would have made for a more exciting film. Instead, they prematurely cut RA-ONE character out of the plot after a spectacular fight sequence with G-ONE. Then the rest of the plot focusses on G-ONE(but ironically it is called RA-ONE) and how G-ONE has to learn human interaction(again, rushed with song sequences) Here too there are too many cheap humour scene like the gay Airport Custom officer, the scene where G-ONE breaks all the furniture.

RA-ONE suffers because there are too many comedy scenes(of the cheapest variety) in a film that should be more serious and thrilling. If the story was more a thriller and chase film with more emphasis on RA-ONE it could have been a many times better film, and had more universal appeal. It rather curious why the producers did not make their film more universal, as they were aiming this one worldwide. I think a lot of Bollywood filmmakers end up shooting themselves in their foot when they get opportunities to make potential global films, as we have seen with Bhansali with Saawariya; Advani with CC2C.

All up, as I stated in my review of RA-ONE on IMDB, RA-ONE is simply a technology demonstrater. It is not really a proper movie. It is Bollywood experimenting with Hollywood technologies, so that it can use it in future productions. RA-ONE will represent a milestone in Indian cinema only because it was the first Bollywood movie to use Hollywood SFX technology and story(Krissh and Koi Mil Gaya fall very short) There are very few movie industries in the world that can do this. So RA-ONE is hooray for Bollywood.

We will be seeing bigger and better SFX movies in Bollywood in no time.