Watching Dasavatharam has been one of my greatest experiences. It is the first time I have been to movie at theaters to a language I didn't understand , tamil in this case. So following this there would be some personal experiences and you are free to skip it and directly read from "Review: " ...
Vijetha assured me that I would get tickets and not to worry but I didn't dare call her up till 1:30 or so and it was only just for the sake of formality I called silently praying : God, please let her forget that she needs to book me a ticket, please, please. Nopes, nothing doing beta , you are destined to see it and you shall see it - tadastu (ding)...
So I agreed, went to PVR, took the tickets from the guy. For a while my heart fluttered seeing the price :300. 300??? So I did some mental calculations. Let's see I saw Horton Hears a Who at 210 and that holds good for any english movie give or take 30 bucks. On top of that if Nikhil had been to a tamil movie of an unknown actor which he finally enjoyed is it not possible for me to enjoy Kamal Haasan's movie? of course... Now all I needed to justify was the remaining 90. That's simple. I just skipped my lunch plan at Meghna (thank goodness the restauarant was full) and decided to go veg the days starting from 16-20th. Phew!!!! Now that things are settled I let out a huge sigh of relief.. As it usually happens my mind starts wavering after certain decisions I make and this time I had SO much misgivings and thoughts like : Who am I trying to fool - going alone to a Tamil movie spending 300 bucks?.
Review:
Story:
This is a nonstop action movie in the likes of Kshana Kshanam, Anaga Anaga oka roju (incidentally both directed by RGV himself) tinged with comedy and action right from the word go. The story is fairly simple. Kamal works for a giant pharmaeucitical company and under his guidance achieves a outstanding breakthrough in generating a biological weapon -George Bush (Kamal himself ...will come to that later...) himself phones in to personally congratulate the team involved in it you see. Seeing that hero won't be bought with money the baddies try to smuggle the goods themselves . Hero finds out and reaches to the crime scene first and steals the compound and there begins the chase. And the rest of the story is about how the hero successfully manages to keep off the assassin and fail all his attempts.
Music:
Reshmiyya's music never really enticed me , somehow my ears just can't take in his nasal voice that goes uuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnn....and luckily for me not one song was sung by him. Ya..ya..he is talented and all that...anyways I enjoyed this films so much so that I downloaded, coincidentally, Tamil music as telugu ones were not available and liked them immensely. I did get telugu ones after a while but stayed with the former. Music never really feels like a distraction here and it is blendedly nicely along with the story. Here again unfortunately Mallika's item number is so gaudy right from her dress to her steps. I found her tolerable in 'Guru' where I found her dance a bit sensuous... And a special mention regarding 'Oh oh Sanam' song: you willl truly appreciate this song and it's meaning too after seeing the movie ..
Acting:
Asin: She has a dual role in this film. The first one is a fairly short one as a wife of temple priest and the second is the main heroine role where we see her acting as a second fiddle to hero and a staunch krishna devotee. She does her parts well.
Mallika Sherawath: Good news, her role is really really small and she had ample scope to display her assets and that's all I have to say about that. Anything more then I would be doing her a great disgrace...
Kamal Haasan: Of all his avatars I liked him the best in 2 notably the telugite inspector who remains dumb throughout the movie and the other is the main role. Acting wise we see the vintage Kamal with his funny bone intact and this movie reminded me so much of Michael, Madana , Kamraj
Best Parts:
- First and foremost has to be George Dubya Bush (played by Kamal). I wonder if it was the delibrate intention of the director to potray him like a joker but the result was freaking hilarious. With such gaudy makeup and funny accent, his walking style, and the way he jumps and walks up to the mike at the last scene.
- Fight between the Kungfu master (kamal again) and the rogue assassin (do i have to say it? ) at the end. I was just not prepared for it. I mean it looked as if they copy-pasted it from a hollywood flick. In a word: Awsome.
- Scenes involving gulti character.
Some groans:
- Makeup in this movie sucks big-time and among all the ten roles only 4 look realistic and the rest look as if some dead skin has been patched up and you can see the abnormalities either in the cheek bone (the kungfu master) or the eye, or the skin (when playing the old lady, her hand was like a huge slab of bread) or the whole face itself (like the lambu or Bush).
- Special Effects, the less said is better-you wonder if it is the same Kamal who had given us Bharateeyudu, Hey Ram? Maybe he didn't really bother about this department and let the director have the final say. Frankly I had too much expectations, it being Kamal's film but it turned out to be another Mrugaraju or Deviputrudu for that matter. All this hype about costliest film just gets on my nerves. Where the heck did they put all the money ? Just sample these:
- A stadium just looks like one of the badly done Microsoft screensavers,
- So-called mind-blowing tsunami which excepting for the height of ways looked like a huge swimming pool was given a shake from the other end.
- The lab, which at first sight anyone who has bit of English film knowledge would immediately associate with the one in ‘The Rock’, looks authentic enough but for pete’s sake why can’t they have water looking like water? You know the scene where we see water flooding inside to neutralize the atmosphere; even a 1 year old could understand that it was graphics. It looked that bad.
Overall:
I enjoyed this film right from the start to end barring my few groans above. I don't understand why people are complaining about the movie saying this is just mediocre and all that. Yes, there are so many lose plotholes like the pre-historic storyline that just doesn't add up at all, and so much more that can be improved but ultimately it kept me entertained and that's what I was looking for. Excepting for one story with a political backdrop everything else I understood and the movie had me in splits so many times. So folks, don't listen to all the crap that is being said and just enjoy the movie for what it is : a no brainer pop corn flick with a real fearsome baddie ...
Ulaga Nayagane ~~~~~
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