Friday, June 20, 2008

Dasavatharam - Movie Review


Cast: Kamalhasan, need I say more?

Whats the reason to make a magnum opus? You want to showcase the movie, the actor or the director? Would you put K S Ravikumar as a director? Kamal Hassan takes himself too seriously most of the time, K S somehow makes it work partially. At 3+ hours, the movie tends to be a bore. And dear Kamal, why not English subtitles to match the hype? You can make money mate. The premise is simple, is our life designed or do we have choice? Our story mixes the butterfly effect with having no effect, that the effect itself was engineered. Now for tam movie execution.

In 10 th century Tamland a Shaivite King throws a Vaishnavaite Deity (yes that I forgot the name of the deity is pathetic) into the sea along with the faithfully Vaishnavite priest. Cut to the present and the priest is reborn as a bio-technologist who unwittingly has created a biological weapon which goes on to get stolen and the rest of the movie is spent recovering this weapon, from US to TN (the transition is natural isn’t it?) Finally the world is saves by the Tsunami which only kills a few people instead of millions. Lo! And behold, the deity gets revealed.

Now I shall try to get the 10 avatars:

The priest (hefty one at that), the bio-technologist (oh cmon dude you just cant romance Asin get over it), GWB (this ones good, “Gentlemen, we have a problem”), assassin (ok this one is a yo-yo, old woman, Japanese samurai, old lady (witch!!!), tall pathan (or tall dressed pathan), surd singer (Avatar singh, he is cured of throat cancer due to a bullet through his throat – beat that Rajni) and of course the fave Balram Naidu. The gult trapped in TN, RAW officer. Naidu is hilarious and epitomizes why Kamal still has the cult.

How I wish Kamal had left the silicon to itself and tried all the characters with basic make up, it would have rocked. Here you have a tiring Kamal whose magical expressions are lost in layers of make up. Such a pity. Sigh.

Songs are pointless ( and as sushi says, bikini clad sherawat isn’t an assault in tam sensibilities? ) and are pathetic. Lots of the movie is not required and shut the pathan up please. K S Ravikumar it is and hence the movie does not bother you too much.

Rating 3.5/5

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