Great movies need great reviews. A film ignites a reviewer to pen a satisfying and proud composition which he obliges for his self sufficing pleasure and to the people reading it getting resonating emotions what they encountered watching the piece. Even if some did not enjoy the film as they did, there will be room for discussion in positive manner. The film “Dasavatharam” is not one and does not deserve a review in first place but all film gets its day with equal rights of dissection and disposition.Hence, I came up with ten reasons I hated the film. For people unknown of the choice of ten, actor Kamal Hassan does ten roles in this despicable film written by him too.
(1) The amount of time and money through resources and materials for creating ten characters could have been solved by ten very good actors with more dimensions and depth for a film, but it does not matter since this film is not an attempt in giving good cinema.
(2) The baseless story of ridiculousness with a condescending intellectual stand Kamal takes on his knowledge of the 12th century history which has no place in this film. It deserves more than an ego inflated person who is known to be the hope of the Indian film industry to put a great effort for contributing to the art of cinema. He has not been that and have avoided it most of his films giving priority to the film rather than his stardom and the rare talent he possesses in a mundane film industry.
(3) A baseless and implausible screenplay having characters walk in and out with no agenda other than to create a project for the CGI people to interlace multiple Kamal in single screen. And for the money they ravished upon, at least couple of shots should be a wide one to show the fund dispatched in those multiple waste characters.
(4) While I hated at least 7-8 characters, the prominent professional killer Christian Fletcher, an ex-CIA officer (No Kidding!) with a bad make up wanders senseless and sociopathic having no idea whatsoever on what to do with the “biological” weapon of mass destruction carried on by the protagonist Govind.
(5) Asin’s character of Andal and mainly her voice – Andal an orthodox Brahmin girl with fanaticism over her religion spitting out in every scene is neither funny nor insightful. She shouts “En Perumaale” (My Lord) towards the idol which has the “weapon” box so many times with an irritating voice and ignorant mode that I was suffocated with that character.
(6) Himesh Reshammiya’s horrible display of senseless aural hell. That is enough since nothing more is needed for this abysmal audio sample.
(7) There are twenty easy instances of awkwardness which mocks itself. It does that because the film tries to be intelligent at many places and makes a fool of it but it goes to auto pilot in logic when there were chase scenes of uber insanity.
(8) A length of 165 minutes of sheer boredom. In the first thirty minutes, I saw the watch to check the timings and then in a tragic sigh I told myself, “I have another freaking two hour and fifteen minutes of this irredeemable film to rob my salvation”. I immediately shrugged off it to do a fair justice on judging the film by its first thirty minutes. After 165 minutes, my salvation was robbed. How much naïve I was?
(9) The boasting up of its story, technical aspects and every single tiny departments of the film stating its obvious success. The stench of their glorification was so bad that the one interview I saw made me to doubt the actual intention of Kamal. And he proved the intention with the film shamelessly advertising on its value and presence in the industry failing to make advancement.
(10) Finally Kamal, for whom I have always been a fan and have great respect. I loved his “Guna” during when it was discarded as a social film outcast. “Mahanadi”, “Thevar Magan” and mainly his “Hey Ram” were master pieces. My appreciations for his films did not stop with his artsy drama but loved his diversity and versatility in his blockbuster entertainment and comedy hits. It would have been great to see an entire comedy flick with couple of characters especially the funny Balram Naidu to have it the way of “Michael Madhana Kamarajan”. Even in his “Aalavanthan” failure there were ahead of time touches of cinematic excellence. His stardom persona never interfered in that. But here you see a distorted Kamal pompously declaring his uniqueness in a common entertainment done bad proclaiming artistic aesthetics. Apart from the character of Balram Naidu, the rest were first of all an unnecessary baggage for his pleasure of doing “extraordinary”. This is a sign of decline towards his perils of stardom in his realm of great stand in a mud of entertainment blockbusters. It hurts me more because some times when great talents decline, they take the film trend along with them. I can only hope there is a redemption plan currently in his production.
11 comments:
All your movies of choice have been a commercial let downs. I personally think that he has tried to play it safe, unfortunately with no different result.
I tried to analyze this from a different angle.
http://bale-blog-ia.blogspot.com/2008/06/dasavatharam-sivaji-and-reality-check.html
BTW, nicely written post.
Commercial letdowns :-). That hurts :-P. But yeah when it becomes business (as most of the case it does), art erases itself. I take a view point of film by film basis and completely subjective terms. I leave the box office and money making to the people :-). I love movie making as such and hence I opine on the art of it. But I read your posting and it is amazingly interesting on the popularity chart. That indeed will be a great financial run through for Kamal in marketing per se :-). In terms of films, where are you Kamal? Time for a make over in the department of humility :-).
U went to chicago for watching this? And as always, I differ in the review of the movie!!!
Cheers,
Nagesh.
Nope, they viewed one show in Peoria. Seems they do it now and then.
And I read your review and I cried :-P. I lost total respect for you :-D (whatever minuscule amount I had). Well I do not think there will be an agreement in this as usual :-).
Did U ever have a respect for me?!? That's news to me :-)
My like for Masala movies is well-known and Dasavathaaram perfectly fitted that description!!! I am waiting for the box-office verdict. Am not sure how it is going to turn out..........
Cheers,
Nagesh.
Screw the Box Office :-P. Obviously he would have made the money in one week.
But come one Nagesh, even in entertainment point of view, this sucked way too bad. And I mean, it choked the energy out of me. I have never felt the urgency to get out of the theatre. I almost wanted to walk out :-).
Being a daily reader of your blog, i guess this was one of the sharpest criticism that you ever come up with.With your degree of patience to watch out for the best in movies, i can imagine what kinda movie should have made you write this. :)
Horrendous is the word for this disaster :-).
Am just waiting for my office work to get over this week and cant wait to watch this one in theatres. but I guess what I was scared of has happened, with too much hype and kamal boasting too much about himself, this was sure to suck...Ashok I completely agree on the fact that kamal should be using his wide audience base to do some good films and not try to show himself as an intellect ( amongst kollywood mud)... whatever, I will go and watch and post a comment after that
Be sure to comment on once you have seen the film :-).
I happened read this review y'day evening and felt you had given a very sharp and strong criticism -- now I feel I'd not be surprised if your comments were more sharp and strong: In between, I watched this dreadful movie.
I said it here when the movie news was floating - with Kamal playing 1 role, he normally fills 85% of the movie.. with 10 roles, God Save. I don't know if someone is going to fund kamal after this, but if that miracle happens, I won't be surprised if he plays every character in a movie - a real sadist
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