The Hindu Business Line : Grow up!

Should Indian cinema stay away from animation? Judging by the scores of production houses marching down the animated path, the question seems almost redundant. But if you go by the results on the screen, the answer should be a dismal yes.

The latest animated feature, which opened last Friday, was Cheenti Cheenti Bang Bang. Nice catchy title, all the better to grab its target audience as well as those adults who’d remember Hollywood cheesy comic riot Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and accompany their kids to see if this could entertain them as much.

Cheenti Cheenti has a smart, kid-friendly premise: red ants and black ants living on either side of a river bank in perfect amity, until the arrival of an evil termite. Ants are the sort of benign insects that children like. They are usually held up as creatures of industry, and their bites are usually not serious. We’ve had Hollywood ants (Antz) regaling us earlier. Other kinds of insects usually have a big role to play in kiddie animation: A Bug’s Life was both funny and informative.

Trouble with characterisation

The main thing about good animation, as in all good movies, is a strong plot and equally strong story-telling. Cheenti Cheenti has neither, except for the villain — a really nasty piece of goods — which is distinctive, all the other characters merge into each other. Would you confuse Nemo with his father — both brilliantly coloured fish — in Finding Nemo? Never. Nemo is the foolish feller who gets lost in the big, wide ocean, and his father is the brave soul who finds him and gets him back home. ‘Z’, the heroic ant in Antz gathers together all the others and helps them break out of conformity and gets the beautiful princess to boot. Woody Allen’s voice and persona may have infused a little ‘adultness’ into a standard kiddie genre, but it also made the film goofily intelligent and very attractive for children and adults.

The Indian example

Even in Hindi cinema’s one of the successful animation features Hanuman, everything was carefully engineered so that it could have a broad-based appeal. The 2005 film had one of the best music scores, a solid script and a lovable lead character. Hanuman Returns, not exactly a sequel but the next in line of the Hanuman movies, tried to build on the original, but it wasn’t half as successful.

Cheenti Cheenti Bang Bang attempts at getting some things right. It has recognisable voices from actors such as Ashish Vidyarthi, Anjan Srivastava and Asrani. Some thought has gone into the design; one sequence with Ghun the Termite, declaring his wicked intentions, stands out.

On the whole, though, the film becomes a blur of indistinct characters, burdened with archaic dialogue, long past its sell-by date. There’s a Romeo-Juliet romance between ‘boy and girl’ ants from the warring camps: always a mistake, because it slows things down, especially when you have the lovebirds, sorry, love-ants, singing Bollywood-style songs.

There are lessons to be learnt here (they should have been in a manual long back, actually). Top of the list, as always, is the story. Indian animation has always leaned towards mythologicals as a tried-and-tested audience catcher. The banal results belie that confidence. Take, for example, last year’s My Friend Ganesha, which had a shrieky Gangubai going ‘deva re deva’ every few minutes, and a girl masquerading as a boy. Do we not have male child actors? Do we not think that children will twig on to this odd choice and treat the film with the disdain it deserves?

The treatment is as important. Do not patronise kids. Gen-Y children consume more forms of media than any adult, and the way they access and process the constant barrage of information and entertainment is astounding. Do animators really believe that a child who has free access to, say, a Shrek or Kung Fu Panda will go in for a Cheenti Cheenti? Even those who do not live in metros and do not have satellite television can borrow DVDs, or see re-runs of old cartoons on Doordarshan. I’m afraid those who make animation movies need to grow up fast.

Opening today

Out in theatres nationwide today is a film which may change the way we view animation in India. The first Walt Disney-Yashraj co-production is Roadside Romeo, an animated film targeting family audience. Directed by one-time popular child actor Jugal Hansraj (Masoom - 1983), it has Bollywood A-listers — Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor — lending their voices to the venture. The couple play sparring lovers Romeo and Laila, and Jaaved Jaffery is the dreaded don-of-the-street, Charlie Anna.

From a first-look promo, the dialogues seem spunky and contemporary, the animation is slick with the off-screen stories of the lead characters lending the film an edge. Saif and Kareena’s real life romance is likely to animate the reel counterpart, helped along by Jaaved’s comic sure-footedness.

Time to go to the next level.

shubhra.gupta@gmail.com

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