The pre-release hype for Blue is justified of course:  one of India’s most expensive production (last heard 100 crore), Oscar-winning crew (ARR, Resul Pookutty), Kylie Minogue, an “underwater action movie” like never seen before… Who were they trying to lead on? Obviously the target audience is someone who hasn’t watched a Hollywood action movie or for that matter even Discovery channel.

Blue suffers from an old Bollywood problem – treat the audience as if they have a negative IQ and throw in some Akshay Kumar, lissome lasses, stupid jokes, bike chases (not car, just bike since Dhoom) – spend all the money on locations and not a cent on a writer of any caliber and – tada – cross your fingers and hope for a mega opening.

Sure, the action sequences (the one’s on land ie.) like the Thai bike-chase isn’t bad and is directed by the same guy who did The Fast and the Furious, but they’re good only in isolation – it simply doesn’t work to plug in impressive sequences in an otherwise limp movie.

And this whole ‘underwater action’ has no drama at all. It looks like the director forgot that 1. You can’t really move quickly through water (hence the unrealistic speeded up shots) and 2. Actors can’t talk underwater (and background music makes a poor substitute) – there just isn’t enough to hold the audience’s attention – we’ve seen it all before, and it’s not like there is any suspense or thrill being injected into even at the screenplay level. It’s just plain boring.

The characters have no graph (just turns and weak revelations towards the end), there are absolutely no high points or even any kind of emotional scenes (the one thing Bollywood usually gets right), and absolutely no directorial subtlety of any kind.

The lesser said about the performances, the better. If Lara Dutta can agree to play a role that involves her wearing not much and acting like a loony with the mental age of a five year old, then you can clearly see that the actors treating the film as an extended vacation in the Bahamas. And Rahul Dev, really?

Technically the film is serviceable, but perhaps the resources would be better spent making a documentary: you don’t need a bound script for one and the chances of finding a real treasure would be more than this film doing well.