Associate
I pride myself as an open minded cinema goer, and when my friend saw it being listed on Cineworld, we decided to give it a go. Cineworld said:
"Dasavatharam is a Tamil feature film directed by K. S. Ravikumar, who with Dasavatharam, is teaming up with Kamal Haasan for the fourth time. Haasan acts in ten different roles, breaking the record for an actor's portrayal of the most different characters whilst Asin Thottumkal in a dual role and Mallika Sherawat also play lead roles in the film. The film, which has been under production since mid-2005, has Himesh Reshammiya as the music composer and Oscar Ravichandran as the main producer."
We came across 3 warning signs before the film had started:
1 - all the cinema staff went Chris Tarrant on me and my mate when we asked for the tickets, when we showed our tickets to get in, when we sat outside the screen waiting to get in. "Are you sure you want to watch this?"
We argued that we just wanted to see what it's like since it sounded interesting
2 - as our fellow film goers arrived at the same screen (we had to wait outside), we noticed an ethnic exclusivity to everyone around us.
We argued that it's only normal that it's a film that would appeal the most viewers who're more culturally aware of the film's background.
3 - the front speakers failed to work during the trailers, it was interesting watching the Dark Knight and The Incredible Hulk trailers with only Centre and Satelite speakers...
I amended this by complaining to the cinema staff who happened to be just outside the screen.
Here's what I had to say about this film:
You don't need to be Tamil / Indian in background to watch it, the subtitles are sufficient for you to understand them. However you will definitely miss out the lyrics to songs.
The entire film's actually dubbed over. Majority of the story (of what I saw) were set in America, and really, it's almost like an American film that happens to involve Indian characters. Anyway, there're a fair bit of English, and they're still dubbed, in English, by other characters.
The selling point of the film - title actor playing 10 roles, is actually a bit of a joke. It's better than Eddie Murphy's The Nutty Professor in that the actor actually portrayed drastically different characters, much like Peter Seller in Dr. Strangelove (one of my all time favourite films). Although in reality, Austin Powers 3 would be a more appropriate comparison, in how ridiculous some of the characters were.
The major let down of the film seems to be the technology/budget. Haasan played 6 different characters that I've seen in the film before I walked out, these included:
A faithful deciple of the Hindu god Vishnu. This role involved no makeup, and it carried a mixture of Jackie Chan / Indiana Jones style semi-comedic martial art fighting.
A biologist, turn race car pro during car chase scenes, and James Bond during detective scenes. Again, this role involved no makeup because it was set in a different time entirely. He's the protagonist / narrator of the story who... as stated, turns into a professional race car driver during car chase scenes, and outsmarts research facility security when he turned James Bond...
George W Bush... which involved him wearing an oversize prosthetic mask with barely visible eyes in contact lenses. This role is essentially a complete **** take of Bush's infamous intelligence, with "snappy" dialogues like "If it's too complicated, don't bother explaining it to me." uttered to his strategic officer in the white house. The mask was terrible, the accent was non-texas, and utterly pointless to the point that I stayed in the cinema
A white hitman parrallel to... any "hardcore" villian's right hand man in any Jean Claude Van Dam movie. Again, huge mask, sporting sun glasses at night.
A Japanese martial artist. Huge mask... A very cliched portrait of Japanese culture of honour and compassion. Role was taken very seriously, but I can hardly think any of the audience could empathesis looking at his ridiculous mask.
Airport security manager who's the comic relief of the movie. Chin prosthetics to make him look a bit different. He was obviously meant to steal all the scenes in a typical comedy movie with his snappy dialogues. Granted the jokes were funny enough (well... not to the stage where I laughed although our fellow patrons bursted out upon every other line), they were often irrelevant to the situation...
Okay, I realised breaking down the roles of the actor wasn't the best way to analyse where the film failed, I seem to be just wittering on. But my point is - the film has no real plot - it's basically a bit like The Fugitive where our protagonist is stacked against imsurmountable odds without any means of fighting back, except the plot that propells our hero into the action were as convincing as bedtime stories for 3 years olds.
The film was full of illogical goofs, for instance our protagonist had somehow snatched a virus away from the lab in a research facility. He runs across the entire compound to the car park, when the bad guys had just noticed that he'd stolen the goods. Two seconds later, our hero's speeding through the car park, and our bad guys have teleported themselves across the entire facility, buckled themselves into their car, just in time to drive around the corner where the hero had just started his car.
The prosthetics worn on the non-indian roles covered Haasan's entire head, and considering the dialogues were all dubbed anyway - they could just as well have been played by another actor entirely. The masks were completely rigid and the actor couldn't at all portray any emotions through the masks beyond the eyes. It's an utterly pointless exercise, let along drawing huge attention to the silly mask. Incidentally, all the masked reminded me of Roy in the film Mask (starring Cher and Eric Stoltz).
The scene transitions were disorientating, the special effects were poor, half the cast of the American centered story just happen to be Indian who spoke the same dialiac, switching between perfect English and Tamil during every line of dialogue while the Americans in the background couldn't care less. And when one did asked that our protagonist (who I oughta remind you, could speak perfect English) would speak in English in front of fellow English speakers, he ends up asking his colleague to translate instead.
The film seems to want me to take it seriously, bar the comedy scenes, but you simply can't see pass how stupid the plot is, and the massive masks! The acting reminded me of my Sunday school theatre productions when I was 12, and I could almost detect laughter from the camera crew of how silly the film was, except they didn't make it to the final cut due to the dubbing.#
I have no doubt Haasan is a good actor however, for the roles that he was trying to portray, he's done a decent job of it. They just happen to be really stupid roles, or they involved very stupid masks.
So yeah, I ended up walking out after sitting for an hour hoping to see at least all 10 roles Haasan plays. Unfortunately it was too painful for me to carry on when I found zero entertainment value from the film... I sat through Terminator 3, Matrix Revolutions, AND worst of all - Accidental Husband. I guess I would have walked out on Accidental Husband if not for it being a birthday present to a female friend, but at least it didn't have the ridiculous masks!
Sorry it turned into a bit of a rant here. But please, unless you're a fan of Indian cinema or the director / actors involved, save yourself the effort to try and explore this particular film in the foreign genre.
"Dasavatharam is a Tamil feature film directed by K. S. Ravikumar, who with Dasavatharam, is teaming up with Kamal Haasan for the fourth time. Haasan acts in ten different roles, breaking the record for an actor's portrayal of the most different characters whilst Asin Thottumkal in a dual role and Mallika Sherawat also play lead roles in the film. The film, which has been under production since mid-2005, has Himesh Reshammiya as the music composer and Oscar Ravichandran as the main producer."
We came across 3 warning signs before the film had started:
1 - all the cinema staff went Chris Tarrant on me and my mate when we asked for the tickets, when we showed our tickets to get in, when we sat outside the screen waiting to get in. "Are you sure you want to watch this?"
We argued that we just wanted to see what it's like since it sounded interesting
2 - as our fellow film goers arrived at the same screen (we had to wait outside), we noticed an ethnic exclusivity to everyone around us.
We argued that it's only normal that it's a film that would appeal the most viewers who're more culturally aware of the film's background.
3 - the front speakers failed to work during the trailers, it was interesting watching the Dark Knight and The Incredible Hulk trailers with only Centre and Satelite speakers...
I amended this by complaining to the cinema staff who happened to be just outside the screen.
Here's what I had to say about this film:
You don't need to be Tamil / Indian in background to watch it, the subtitles are sufficient for you to understand them. However you will definitely miss out the lyrics to songs.
The entire film's actually dubbed over. Majority of the story (of what I saw) were set in America, and really, it's almost like an American film that happens to involve Indian characters. Anyway, there're a fair bit of English, and they're still dubbed, in English, by other characters.
The selling point of the film - title actor playing 10 roles, is actually a bit of a joke. It's better than Eddie Murphy's The Nutty Professor in that the actor actually portrayed drastically different characters, much like Peter Seller in Dr. Strangelove (one of my all time favourite films). Although in reality, Austin Powers 3 would be a more appropriate comparison, in how ridiculous some of the characters were.
The major let down of the film seems to be the technology/budget. Haasan played 6 different characters that I've seen in the film before I walked out, these included:
A faithful deciple of the Hindu god Vishnu. This role involved no makeup, and it carried a mixture of Jackie Chan / Indiana Jones style semi-comedic martial art fighting.
A biologist, turn race car pro during car chase scenes, and James Bond during detective scenes. Again, this role involved no makeup because it was set in a different time entirely. He's the protagonist / narrator of the story who... as stated, turns into a professional race car driver during car chase scenes, and outsmarts research facility security when he turned James Bond...
George W Bush... which involved him wearing an oversize prosthetic mask with barely visible eyes in contact lenses. This role is essentially a complete **** take of Bush's infamous intelligence, with "snappy" dialogues like "If it's too complicated, don't bother explaining it to me." uttered to his strategic officer in the white house. The mask was terrible, the accent was non-texas, and utterly pointless to the point that I stayed in the cinema
A white hitman parrallel to... any "hardcore" villian's right hand man in any Jean Claude Van Dam movie. Again, huge mask, sporting sun glasses at night.
A Japanese martial artist. Huge mask... A very cliched portrait of Japanese culture of honour and compassion. Role was taken very seriously, but I can hardly think any of the audience could empathesis looking at his ridiculous mask.
Airport security manager who's the comic relief of the movie. Chin prosthetics to make him look a bit different. He was obviously meant to steal all the scenes in a typical comedy movie with his snappy dialogues. Granted the jokes were funny enough (well... not to the stage where I laughed although our fellow patrons bursted out upon every other line), they were often irrelevant to the situation...
Okay, I realised breaking down the roles of the actor wasn't the best way to analyse where the film failed, I seem to be just wittering on. But my point is - the film has no real plot - it's basically a bit like The Fugitive where our protagonist is stacked against imsurmountable odds without any means of fighting back, except the plot that propells our hero into the action were as convincing as bedtime stories for 3 years olds.
The film was full of illogical goofs, for instance our protagonist had somehow snatched a virus away from the lab in a research facility. He runs across the entire compound to the car park, when the bad guys had just noticed that he'd stolen the goods. Two seconds later, our hero's speeding through the car park, and our bad guys have teleported themselves across the entire facility, buckled themselves into their car, just in time to drive around the corner where the hero had just started his car.
The prosthetics worn on the non-indian roles covered Haasan's entire head, and considering the dialogues were all dubbed anyway - they could just as well have been played by another actor entirely. The masks were completely rigid and the actor couldn't at all portray any emotions through the masks beyond the eyes. It's an utterly pointless exercise, let along drawing huge attention to the silly mask. Incidentally, all the masked reminded me of Roy in the film Mask (starring Cher and Eric Stoltz).
The scene transitions were disorientating, the special effects were poor, half the cast of the American centered story just happen to be Indian who spoke the same dialiac, switching between perfect English and Tamil during every line of dialogue while the Americans in the background couldn't care less. And when one did asked that our protagonist (who I oughta remind you, could speak perfect English) would speak in English in front of fellow English speakers, he ends up asking his colleague to translate instead.
The film seems to want me to take it seriously, bar the comedy scenes, but you simply can't see pass how stupid the plot is, and the massive masks! The acting reminded me of my Sunday school theatre productions when I was 12, and I could almost detect laughter from the camera crew of how silly the film was, except they didn't make it to the final cut due to the dubbing.#
I have no doubt Haasan is a good actor however, for the roles that he was trying to portray, he's done a decent job of it. They just happen to be really stupid roles, or they involved very stupid masks.
So yeah, I ended up walking out after sitting for an hour hoping to see at least all 10 roles Haasan plays. Unfortunately it was too painful for me to carry on when I found zero entertainment value from the film... I sat through Terminator 3, Matrix Revolutions, AND worst of all - Accidental Husband. I guess I would have walked out on Accidental Husband if not for it being a birthday present to a female friend, but at least it didn't have the ridiculous masks!
Sorry it turned into a bit of a rant here. But please, unless you're a fan of Indian cinema or the director / actors involved, save yourself the effort to try and explore this particular film in the foreign genre.
