I am not a movie critic and I do not write reviews of movies regularly. And there may be flood of reviews about the newly released 'Dasavatharam' in the blogworld and I can assure you that all of them may be better than what I am going to write here by any standards. But I just wanted to write, to vent out my frustration of having wasted three hours of my life (not that I would have done anything productive in those three hours!) and lost $16.25 for a story that looked like a cheap imitation of Crash and Babel mixed with some thrilling elements from that despicable Tamil movie called 'E'(am talking about the bio-warfare concept)!
Ok, the movie was not THAT bad, but neverthless expectations took a huge hit during those three hours. It was a typical 'Kamal' movie - made by Kamal for Kamal. The movie was just full of Kamal - sometimes you need to show other characters too, right? Well, one Kamal goes off screen, the next one pops up within five frames! I guess you can't help it when you have 10 'avatars' to be highlighted in the movie.
Asin's role in the movie was to play an 'acharamana' Tam-Brahm girl, who keeps running along with Kamal to escape the baddies and she has played the role to perfection. I am being sarcastic. Mallika I thought had a better role and she was good for the 20 odd minutes she was in the movie. Apart from that, the only good thing about the movie was comic relief by the Naidu character - he was hilarious. Kamal has tried to pull off a Crazy Mohan style comedy which did provide some relief from watching so many Kamals but ruefully though did not reach the standards set for a Kamal movie by the evergreen MMKR! In my opinion, his potrayal of Naidu and the uneducated Dalit was the best among all the 10 characters.
Coming to the makeups - a very good attempt, but unfortunately some of them were really really really bad to look at. Fletcher, the ex-CIA's bulging forehead made it look like his ass was on his face. No kidding! I loved the Japanese character though. The martial arts fight sequence at the end looked very real and 'martial arts'y. If Kamal had done the entire fight himself, then hats off to him.
Though the graphics during the initial part of the movie (the drowning of the Ananthasheshan idol) was a put off, the graphics at the end of the movie depicting the Tsunami was really good by Tamil movie industry standards. A last minute romance between Kamal and Asin at the end of the movie looked like it had been placed there to satisfy a need for romance in the movie. And comeon, romance in the aftermath of a Tsunami attack?!?!?! When hundreds of people had just been killed and whole villages made a wreck?! And it definitely lacked chemistry and Kamal is well known for his chemisty with his heroines.
Well, it would do good for you to expect a movie in likes of MMKR or Panchatantiram. What do you expect when you have KS Ravikumar as the director. I am a HUGE fan of Kamal. I love Kamal's acting. His versatality in acting, potraying different characters is unmatched. And he should stick to that and only that! : He shouldn't venture out to screenplay or dialogues. Didn't Mumbai Express teach him anything?!
Dasavatharam was a great effort by Kamal, but I rue spending 15 bucks for a movie that I have already almost forgotten!
