This is a great movie from start to finish... ONLY if you are in the fifth grade or less. If not, you can watch it for the good attempts at the almost-convincing VFX. But be prepared for some assault on your IQ.
Firstly, I was really rooting for this movie before watching it. I was traumatised for a few hours after the director's previous 'Miruthan',(India's first zombie movie apparently), and not because of how terrifying the zombies were, but how poor the VFX was. So I didn't have great expectations for this one. However, after the trailer, I was surprised that the visuals seemed quite good, and was hoping for a miracle.
Tik Tik Tik got close to delivering on the miracle, but soon stumbled within the first half hour and hit logic harder than an asteroid. There is suspension of disbelief and then, there is suspension of any thinking faculty at all. TTT wants the second from us.
An asteroid that is huge enough to destroy two states is headed toward India. And yet, none of the other countries' space organisations detect or discuss this with India, and no news channels are aware of this. The ISRO decides to tackle this by blasting the asteroid, and for that, they need to steal a nuclear missile from a highly secure space organization. (No evacuation plans for the people who could die because surely, it is very easy to steal missiles from other countries' space stations). To steal the missile, they decide to recruit a thief and magician who is serving jail time (because our country that is confident enough to steal missiles from space doesn't have a single skilled military person). Now, all these events are not impossible...perhaps in one in a million causal chains of events (that could only be imagined by the director), these can happen. This is suspension of disbelief. I would have been okay if this was all.
Here come the better parts: the magician and his friends get only 2 days of training for a space journey! One of his friends has a hacking software that can hack anything - from IPL referee boards to even China's space satellite software!! Jayam Ravi's spacecraft crashes on Moon (!), and is badly damaged, and yet, they are able to take off after a few minutes of heroism on the Moon! Cutting the hydrogen supply of an advanced spacecraft is as simple as cutting the wires of a bike!! There is a 200 ton nuclear missile that can wipe out an entire country, and yet, there is only a single level of safety for it, which our Jayam Ravi is able to bypass with some silly magic tricks.
There is more. And this is the main problem with the movie. And I write so much of the problem although there were fun, enjoyable moments because it spoiled for me an otherwise excellent attempt. For the budget, it delivers so well on VFX and visuals. I wish wish wish they had hired an actual scientist to assist with the script. There is only so much of disbelief that can be suspended. Beyond that, it feels like we are watching a well-made cartoon. When they have put so much resources on making believable graphics and sets, how much would it have cost them to check common sense elements? What could have been a truly path breaking movie has been relegated to the shelves of 'Masala flick' because of lack of sound research. If only!