Dasvatharam -- Tamil movie review

If someone observes the most blogged topics in the past couple of days among South Indian movie fans, it would've been Dasavatharam in one way or the other. It has been in queue for quite a long time and finally it hit the screens last Friday creating a lot of expectations especially among Kamal fans. With a lot of different opinions coming up on the movie, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to expect from it.

Today, I watched the movie quite unexpectedly and if you want a single word review for the movie I'd choose to say - 'mess'. Not that I totally hated the movie but it is a totally uncorrelated sequence of incidents where one should not think beyond the current scene or try to correlate the previous scene with the current one.

Spending 65 crores to just make sure that someone does 10 different roles in a movie is somehow indigestible. An action-packed movie of James Bond types was the target but unfortunately it wasn't even close to it. It was a desperate effort to interrelate butterfly effect, Indian history, bio-nuclear warfare, castism and a hell a lot of other things; which couldn't fail worse than this. If Sivaji took up 9 different roles in Navarathiri, it was clearly organized and well presented. Over here, you could see Kamal everywhere and in every role that if some new character is about to enter the screen you are surprised if it is not Kamal! I still remember shouting 'Oh... don't tell me that is Kamal too' when a nurse character is introduced into the movie. Thankfully it wasn't. :) Further with tons of makeup on his face, he could hardly express anything and if you see a completely odd inhuman face that resembles the faces of animated characters like Shrek, Hulk or alien nation then you could make out that it's Kamal. Such a monotonous/unnatural makeup! It's better not to talk about the crappy Graphics...

Outline of the story - biological weapon being manufactured - misuse attempted - hero tries to save the world - sequence of incidents and never ending chases/Kamals that follow. I could compare this movie to Pudhukkottayilirundhu Saravanan by Dhanush - absolutely no logic, no correlation except that Pud.Saravanan's title card clearly says 'No logic...Only magic'. You will not be looking at your watch and feel frustrated in the movie but nonetheless anyone would've expected a lot more from Kamal. The only relief in the movie is the 'Balram Naidu' character - minimal makeup, timely jokes, excellent expressions. The happiness on his face when he meets another Telugu guy is just so natural...

Another controversial thing about the movie is the disrespect for Hinduism. Perumal's idol is treated like a toy, thrown around and played with. On the other hand, dialogs like 'Siva and Vishnu had no other Gods to clash with. So they fought with each other through their devotees' or 'your God will be in toilet but not with atheists like me' were not too diplomatic. But then, it's a Kamal movie and you need to have some Kamalism in it. Unfortunately the positives didn't show up a lot but the negatives did!

In short, if you really don't care too much about the logic or correlation in a movie and all you want to see is 3 hrs of fantasy then the movie will not disappoint you. But if you expect some great acting or stellar performance or amazing story line; I'm sorry the movie is not for you!

P.S: I was quite surprised to see that the team officially lied that this is the first time in the history of 'world cinema' where a person comes in 10 different roles in the same movie. From the limited surfing I did, I found that Kamal himself has done 10 different roles in the movie 'Ellaam inba mayam' and there were people who did upto 27 roles in a film (details below)

Rolf Leslie - 27 parts in the life story of Queen Victoria , Sixty Years a Queen (1913).
Lupino Lane - 24 parts in Only Me (1929).
Joseph Henabery - 14 characters in the Birth of a Nation (1915).
Robert Hirsch - 12 roles in No Questions on Saturday (1964)