Friday, April 23, 2010

Prince: After-thoughts

[Acknowledgment: Some of the ideas in this post is by Viswanath who bore this movie in an almost empty theater with me]

Software engineers are a different species altogether. The first noteworthy thing about them is the kind of language they use. They learn to use this "version" of the language to be impressive (as opposed to being expressive) and later on it becomes part of their lexicon. So, every 'problem' becomes an 'issue ' and the lessons learned become 'learnings'. They try to 'leverage ' their 'cross-functional' network to 'access' (instead of get access) the latest updates in their industry. Another characteristic of theirs is that they are 'liquid' - they would change companies more frequently than Shivraj Patil would change his clothes. It becomes very difficult for companies to give the client what they exactly want. Not that the clients are clear on this, but changing hands on the project has impacts on the final outcome. The project becomes similar to the broth spoiled by too many cooks.

Such mundane software engineers decided to make a film. Imagine - how could it be! First, the fascination for on-site made them base the film abroad. Having watched pirated movies like Matrix, Batman, Spiderman, Iron Man, Bourn Identity, etc with subtitles in their desktop when doing their engineering and then in their laptops when working - they added dollops such fight sequences regardless of their connection to the story. Not only these movies, but the action was inspired heavily by Max Pyne - their introduction to computer games (after Road Rash). So, the fight sequences and the location where the movie would be based were decided.

Like most software engineers, the story-writer post had new engineers quitting and joining almost every day. The resultant story was not much different from the software they make. Each engineer gave it the turn he wanted to give. Same was the case with other roles like screenplay. To give you an example - The climax of the movie is a pirated Da Vinci Code treasure hunt sequence. The hero and heroine crack the code and gets to the Holy Grail. Just then the story writer and the screenplay artist quits. To reduce costs, cheap resources were hired without much verification - not only because they wanted to meet the phantom deadline but also because there was no one capable enough to interview them. And the new hires called a LoveSong() function. So, the moment the Holy Grail came to their hand a love song where hero expresses his love to the heroine and vice versa comes!

But that's not it. Software engineers, after all, will be software engineers. So, the plot revolved around the innovation where a person's memory can be read and written into a chip. His brain can be formatted. And at a later point in time, his memory whose dump was taken in a chip can be re-written to the brain. In fact, you can delete certain files from the chip - in which case, when restored from the chip, the person's brain will not have those 'events' in the memory. Imagine if you could delete the memory of KKR's no-semi-finals-qualify hat-trick!

The software engineers try to be as real as possible. Just as you need to reboot your computer for any OS update to take effect, the person after installing an update from the chip to his brain or restoring to a previous restore-point need to sleep. Until he sleeps, he runs on the older brain version. And once he wakes up, he comes up on the newer version. However, the dreams that he may see when he's asleep are undefined - it could correspond to any or none of the software versions.

Attrition happens and an electronics engineer is hired. He thinks that rebooting a machine time and again would degrade the hardware and finally yield the machine dead. So, he adds to the story that the hero would die after six upgrades of his brain!

But one thing remains common across engineers - the dialogue of the movie. Throughout the movie a hook dialogue - "It's show time" - is used. This, perhaps, is like a recurring meeting notice pop up. This keeps reminding you that you are in a movie in case you are wondering 'main kahan hoon'.

3 Idiots is a favorite movie of most engineers as they can connect to its plot.They all want to be anything but engineers. These software engineers working on the movie also liked 3 Idiots. And being innovative that they are, they tried to improve upon it. So, if 3 Idiots showed the use of vacuum cleaner to do child delivery, this movie showed the use to vacuum cleaner to do diamond robbery. Isn't that a useful innovation! Now, while the hero is on-site - picking up diamonds like small pieces of stones with the vacuum cleaner, his offshore partner senses that the security is coming to catch him. He asks him if he should stop the operation - but then the on-site hero says one of the best dialogues in the history of world cinema - "No way. It's show time for plan B". Brilliant. Isn't it? Not only it's a great dialogue but it also has a moral - that one should always have a plan B.

After the robbery, the journalists throng at the site. A CBI officer is going in for investigations where he over-hears a reported rhetorically asking whether there were any locks. Hearing this, the CBI officer, Khan, replies, "Taale sharifon ke liye hote hai, Choro ke liye salakhein hoti hai." Now, isn't that mind-boggling!

The same CBI officer, Khan, tries to trick certain Mr Roy. Mr Roy says, "Khan, Don't act smart." To which, Khan replies, "Roy, But i am smart".

The whole film is filled with such uber cool dialogues.

The movie also conforms to the current Bollywood trend. Apart from the hero and heroine, only one person is shown 'good' in the film. His name is Khan and he is not a terrorist.

Like most engineers, these software engineers are also fan of cool Apple gadgets. So, they name one of the secret agencies as iGRIP!

But then - by jaisi-karni-waisi-bharni rule - a software engineer who copy-pastes others' code shall get his work being copy-pasted by others. After the movie was completed in the true software development method - the software engineers were partying and browsing a banned site. A virus in the form of a cookie (Kookie) Gulati'd (somersaulted) into the machine and uploaded the movie to its server and corrupted the original copy. The engineers got out of the grief of losing their work pretty soon. They, anyway, are used to shelf'ing their project.

This Kookie-uploaded-movie is released as Prince.

10 comments:

Anonymous April 23, 2010 at 4:15 PM  

cant believe tht u not only watched this piece of crap but are inflicting this horror onto us.. some movies are not worth reviewing.

Anonymous April 23, 2010 at 11:40 PM  

and like and idiot i read the blog post.. LOL.. now isnt that just unfair :P :P

Mustaf April 24, 2010 at 12:03 AM  

U did not read the reviews before going to watch it!!! I thought vivek oberoy himself in a leading role is scary enough to watch a movie :)

Amresh Sinha April 24, 2010 at 3:27 AM  

hehehe gudwork prashant ji...even i watched it and to my surprise it was a housefull show ..and mainly people were sitting fr AC in heat..and i just cant understand wat the protagnists were doing dancing nude on beaches and watersports when there were only 8 hours left fr him to die..

Prashant Mehta April 24, 2010 at 3:43 AM  

malihamariyam ji
Prince is an extraordinary piece of work. I'd rather buy the moser baer CD of it for Rs 20 when it releases.

talkreviews ji
Hope you enjoyed!

Mustaf ji
Nop. I don't read reviews before watching a movie. Sometimes they make me biased. I'd rather like to make other people biased.

Amresh Sinha ji
Thanks!
That's the beauty of Prince. It teaches us the lesson of life. Death is certain and is surely going to come. However, we shouldn't postpone joy. We should do the water sports and dance around the trees - especially jab yeh pata ho ke kal nahi hoga.

deicider April 26, 2010 at 12:40 PM  

Hey P,the post is brilliantly done.I truly marvel at the way you can relate everything to the life of a software engineer,shows a closet philosopher in the making.Well can I add on to the list of films that the engineers seem to have copy pasted.There was a movie called Total Recall where the same memory implant problem was beautifully potrayed by Arnold Schwazeneggar.Well it is also good to see that after the release of MNIK,people with the name of Khan are joining police forces in our movies and are smart quipping cheesy dialogues which in the end are much more potent that the bombs used by terrosits.

alpesh April 27, 2010 at 5:07 PM  

Prashant, This is 1st time that i am seeing prince through your blog, and u know what, i felt it's good enough to see it through ur blog then seeing it in the theater. Really enjoyed it..thanks for saving my 150 buks.
The way you related it with S/W engineers was marvelous..keep posting such good piece of writing.

Biswajit Biswas April 29, 2010 at 10:21 AM  

Now I would definitely like to see the movie. So bollywood is finally following Hollywood in 'action comedies'. Am I correct?

Unknown User May 24, 2010 at 8:19 AM  

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Namrata Mahalingam August 17, 2011 at 10:36 AM  

Your review is simply hilarious! You watched this crap and wrote a review too! Must appreciate your bravery!

First time on your blog and I must admit that I love your writing! :)

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