Finally saw "Dasavatharam" today after hearing a lot about it from my friends. Almost everyone told me that it wasnt as good as it was made out to be, which turned out to be true. According to me, the movie was ok, nto as good as his "Anbe Sivam", which I felt was one of the best tamil movies I've ever seen. As the name suggests, this movie revolves around 10 different people all portrayed by Kamal Hasan himself. This movie broke the record for an actor's portrayal of the most different characters. Kamal has done a tremendous job with his acting skills. The movie has a good story line and is fast paced. But I have a lot of beef against it, which Im going to point out here.
1. Everyone knows Kamal is an aethist. Even a new born baby will know this. Even then he continues to remind everyone is each of his movies that God does not exist (or in this case "When did I ever say, there's no God? It'll be good if there's one"). It gets irritating after a point to hear the same thing again and again.
2. The make up. Its a known fact that Kamal had to sit through 4 hours every day for his make up and another 3 hours to remove the same. But, I seriously felt it wasn't very convincing. Especially the portrayal of George Bush, Chris Fletcher, Shingen Narahashi, Krishnaveni Paati and Kalifulla Khan. It wasn't very natural. Krishnaveni paati - The hands and the face had very artificial wrinkles. I'll get back to this later. Kamal did a better job in Avvai Shanmugi convincing people with his female make up. Chris Fletcher - Damn, he looks like a guy who got Botox injections. George Bush - Bush doesn't have a Jay Leno Jaw.
3. Research. When you are going to a play a real living person, you are expected to devote more time for researching the character and play him. I didnt not except such an aweful performance from Kamal in playing the role of George Bush. The only thing that he got absolutely right about bush is the pronounciation of "New-killer" bombs. Even an average Bush impersonater would have done a better job. Also. conspicious was the fact that the American president was not surrounded by secret service agents. How can you miss that?
4. Research Again. Unlike India, which has an exit system (where the immigration officials check your passprt when you leave the country), the Unites States does not have one. You only have an entry system. There's this scene in the movie where the american officials check Fletcher's and Jasmine (Played by Sherawat). That's not the case in any one America's airports.
5. Segways. I'm talking about the small 2 wheelers that Govind uses to move within his labs. I'm pretty sure Kamal introduced them in the movie just because they are not available in India and people will be fascinated on seeing them. Seriously, this is more like the scene in MMKR, where he opens a briefcase sized laptop, just to show the movie watchers in India that there's a gadget like those in the western world.
6. The number of characters portrayed by Kamal. Seriously man, 10? Was the movie made just with the intention of breaking the record for the number of characters played by the same person? I mean, many of the characters are not necessary/ could have been played by someone else. George Bush was a loose end in the movie. He was absolutely a waste of a character and is one of the worst depections of the man. His voice overs were good, but the body language, the makeup, the background scene for a president etc were horrible and would have been better if he was not there in the movie itself. Krishnaveni paati's make up was another stupidity in the movie. It'd have been better if someone else played this part to make it more realistic. The same with Kalifulla Khan. Make up was horrible and he was not relevant to the story line. One thing I'm happy about is the fact that Kamal did not play the role of Yuka. He could have also outsourced the part of Shingen Narahashi to a real oriental guy. Kamal was not realistic in playing this character too.
7. Length of the movie. Granted, all the tamil movies are approximately 3 hours, but a lot of scenes could have been deleted and the movie shortened if other actors had been involved instead of kamal playing 10 characters.
8. Asin. Will someone please tell asin that her voice is terrible and she needs someone to do a voiceover for her?
9. The Budget. 140 crore rupees. Man oh Man. I seriously feel Oscar V Ravichandran spent all his money so that Kamal could break a record. The end result was not something thats worth all this amount.
10. The CGI. The graphics depicting the boxing day tsunami was aweful. unprofessional stuff. I happen to think that the scene was more like the one on "Day after tomorrow" instead of the actual events of the Tsunami.
Now, for the parts I liked:
1: Kamal was at his absolute best portraying the characters of Balram Naidu, Govind and Nambi.
2: The number of songs in the movie. Only 5 of them and one of which was at the end credits. Pretty neat.
Oh thats it. My bottomline: A typical hyped up Kamal movie which is worth watching at home on a DVD when you have nothing else to do!
No comments:
Post a Comment