FILM REVIEW ‘We Can Be Heroes’: Why did you accept this role, Priyanka?

After seeing this juvenile mishmash of the super-hero film about extra-cocky kids who should be going to a school — and a finishing school at that— but spend all their time trying to ape their super-hero parents, I sat in stunned silence observing a two-minute silence for Priyanka Chopra’s international career.

Is this what it has come to? One of my favourite contemporary Indian actresses has forgotten how to act! Not that We Can Be Heroes gives her much scope to do anything except act bossy in tight executive suits and a hairstyle that suggests she is not quite with the times.

Priyanka plays Ms Granada. I am not sure what she is supposed to be doing except lording over the kids of the super-heroes wagging her well-manicured fingers at them and threatening them with house arrest if they don’t obey her. If Oliver Twist was a miniature super-hero, Ms Granada would be the owner of the orphanage, the one whom Oliver asks for more gruel. How cruel.

The kids in We Can Be Heroes don’t ask Ms Granada for anything. They slip out of confinement to rescue their fathers from an alien invasion, and….yawn! Really, this is all so predicable, ham fisted and uninspired. I looked for a punch-line to the stretched-out gag. Turned out, director Robert Rodriguez (he has worked on a number of underage super-hero escapades) has no other plans. It’s all about empowering the kids.

It’s also about saving your super-hero dads. The super-hero kids all have certain power. Twins called Fast Forward and Rewind have the power to move time in different directions. This is as clever as the film gets. The heroine — no not Priyanka Chopra, but an 10-year old girl called Missy Moreno — has no special powers, and that is her special power. Quite like the film. It has no special powers.