Dasavatharam - Review

I saw a gorgeous girl, clad in a sky blue salwar studded with stones. She was just 2 rows in front of me, and little to the left with no tall creatures in the row before me, obstructing my view. Maaan, was she beautiful! She had a kid with her, and no wonder it was cute too. I know you ask, how can I sight-adichify a mom? I advocate women's empowerment and equality of gorgeous girls. I will never discriminate a good looking woman, just because she is a mom. See, I have such a liberal head. Anyways, why you ask, was I looking at this girl, when there is Ms. Asin Thottumkal on the screen. Good question. The short answer is, but there were also 10 Kamal Hassan's on screen, right? Goddammit people! Focus... focus.

OK. I went to Dasavatharam, last night. And I wanted to update all my dear readers on that, and warn them appropriately.

The movie starts with an episode in 12th Century TamilNadu, ruled by the Saivaite Chola dynasty. Apparently, Kamal Hassan found a conveniently unknown period in history to claim victimhood of all Iyengars. Napolean on the Elephant looks regally awesome actually. But then this is ruined, suddenly the screen is filled with a lot of flesh. I first thought it was a giant walrus jumping on the screen. Only then I realized it could be Kamal Hassan, in a walrus costume. Only when all the loose flesh had settled down did I recognize Kamal's face. Unfortunately he was not wearing any costume but was just standing there topless. I have many things to tell Kamal Hassan, but this is the most important of them all:

First IWTTK (I Want To Tell Kamal): Please wear a shirt.

This is followed by some piss poor special effects on water. I guess, taking these shots on water must have been expensive, so they decided to go for special effects instead. It looks soo fake. I think the Tamil movie industry's special effects wings really needs to mature. We are lagging behind Hollywood by something like 20 years.

Of course, my fears of seeing a ton of Kamal Hassan's blubber abated because the first 15 minutes has no correlation to the rest of the story. I was quite relieved.

The story then shifts to present time, where Kamal Hassan's second role as Govind is a bio-tech scientist, who invents a virus. He realizes that it could be used as a bio-weapon, and decides to destroy it, when it gets transfered to India. Here he dons 8 more absolutely unnecessary roles, and the story goes around these roles. There are some funny moments with Kamal_3 as Balram Naidu, a RAW agent speaking a Telugu accented Tamil. Then he also acts a 95 year old lady, a Dalit activist, a tall man, a sikh man, an American, a Japanese and a Dubya.

Second IWTTK : Make-up isnt everything.

This might not be that something people will agree with me, but some of the make-up of Kamal was just plain pathetic. It really looked synthetic. It is only sad that people extol this farce of a make-up. An easy comparison is another Kamal movie, Michael Madhan Kaama Raajan. That was a laugh riot. And had 4 Kamals. None of them were obnoxious. None were fat. None wore plastic faces.

The females, hmm. That is a different story. Asin comes in two roles. No special make ups. Maan, was she goodo looking. She is the one who kept distracting me from looking at the girl two row front of me. Now that I remember, her second role was also quite irritating, may be because her role was just another foil character in his movies.

Third IWTTK: Thanks for showing me my Asin. :-)

Technically, there were so many mistakes. I stopped counting half way through. Near the end of the movie, Balram Naidu uses a binocular, to see the virus. I learned difference between a telescope and microscope when I was about 10 years old.

There was one thing that I hated about the hype. I read so many many reviews online which were all praise for Kamal Hassan. All the movie stars were going gaga over this movie. K. Balachader in his excitement after watching the movie, tried to lift Kamal Hassan, it seems (One would think twice before doing such a thing after seeing the first scene when Kamal unabashedly shows his blubber...). Another veteran actress Manorama, cried in the theatre it seems. I too cried in the middle of the movie, but maybe for a different reason. Surya lost his sleep at night after this movie. Maybe they were trying to be nice to Kamal Hassan or whatever, but, I now know that, reaction from movie stars do not reflect the quality of the movie.

Anyways, each of these Kamals costed me $1.5. I could have had nice dinner with that kinda money. It is true then, "Singam single-a dhaan varum, panninga dhaan kootama varum".