Saturday, June 14, 2008
I was actually excited about watching Dasavataram on the first day of its release. Especially when NDTV, Times Now & Headlines Today carried non-stop hype about the film yesterday. Someone told me NDTV had given it a 4 out of 5.
I used to be an ardent fan of Kamal Hasan till I saw Hey Ram!
My faith in him fell rapidly after watching the movie. There’s a noble thought somewhere in the movie, but was lost completely in the portrayal of Kamal as a gift to Indian cinema…
“He should stop with just acting”, I thought. And with Panchatantram, Tenali, etc he did seem to make a come-back with just acting.
But Dasavataram? A total three-hour torture! Why can’t someone tell Kamal to retire from the movies? He’s totally lost it! Maybe, just maybe the movie’d been watchable if the 10 avatars had been played by 10 different people. There’d been a cohesive story, at least.
But this looks like its just a movie to showcase the various make-up tricks Kamal is capable of. And believe me, it varies from comical (Kamal as George Bush?! What’s he trying to say? I’m still on the floor laughing!) to downright scary. The Iyengar old lady is made to like one of the scary witches we see in horror flicks… (incidentally a classmate of mine used to scare us with a rubber witch-mask which was very similar to Kamal’s old-lady get-up)
And someone tell me why, but why Kamal’s head looks so disproportionately big to his body in most of his Avatars?
And so many characters are forced, just so the avatars add up to 10. Justification of the title!
But if at all I have one good thing I have to say about the movie, its his avatar as Balram Naidu. We can see a bit of the old Kamal in that character. His Telugu accented Tamil is just too funny!
But Kamal as Dhaler Mehndi who’s cured of cancer by a stray bullet?!!!
Kamal as the white guy -( ex CIA who’s now on the other side of the law) with a huge head?
The 8 feet Kamal who just cannot get a decent word out of his mouth because the mask is obviously limiting his lip movements?
Again, Kamal as George Bush?
And George Bush who’s clue-less about NA CL, which is actually common salt?
The lovely Asin who does nothing but screech her dialogues and get on your nerves?
The never-ending car chases? (Make that train chases, bus chases & helicopter chases)
The Tsunami which makes its appearnace so timely to save the world? (yes, you heard me, save the world. Although a few thousands get wiped out in the process, it saves millions)
Give me a break!!
This movie has been shot with the sole purpose of feeding Kamal’s ego and nothing else.
You can sit through the whole movie and still like it, only if you love him unconditionally…
I liked Shivaji anyday better, simply beacuse it delivered what you expected. It did not have pretenses or claim to be anything cerebral. Just a simple commercial flick, where Rajnikanth did what was expected of him with style…
