Cinema Cinema

Disclaimer: There is no doubt about Kamal Hassan's genius... Fewer movies have made as much an impact on me as Michael Madana Kamarajan. But did he have to do these 10 roles?

So out of sheer boredom and fueled by the summer vacations, I ended up buying an account with one of the Tamil movie online sites. I chose Tamil thinking S and I could see a lot of dinner time favorites. I don't know about that but the first choice of the movie was also the most obvious, Dasavatharam. This Kamal Hassan movie has made headlines all over the world for a variety of reasons from budget to plot and obviously the most important being the fact the Kamal, the lead in the movie has played 10 different roles. Having heard terrifically rave reviews about the movie from tabloids to reliable friends, we were very excited to watch the movie.... for about 15 minutes. At the end of the movie, I was left gawking... and not in the good sense. It became very obvious that the script was tailored to somehow accomodate the 10 different roles that the lead man wanted to play and create history. And in that sense, he did. I don't think anyone is going to attempt anything like this for a long long time. But the worst part was that none of those getups were really required. He could've been content with just playing 2-3 of the main roles and hiring accomplished actors for the rest. Instead they spent a whole lot of cash, time and effort in creating 10 distinct personalities, 7 of whom were totally uncritical to the plot and a couple ended up resembling one another! Some of the get-ups actually looked like the human version of Shrek in Shrek II. And chaos theory as the central theme turned out to be too chaotic and the tsunami scene that people raved about was total disappointment. It was crazy. And Kamal Hassan taking up the screenplay as a 11th role was probably the big damper in the whole fiasco..

On a totally unrelated note, I acquired a DVD of Dhoom II and decided it was well worth a wasted afternoon to gawk at Hrithik. So subconsciously as I watched it, I counted him wear 8 different disguises - all of which looked convincing and looked great on him. While I reached no.8, my heart beat a little faster. What a humungous disappointment it would've been to Kamal Hassan had Hrithik equalled 10 in a totally unintended and unassuming manner. Lol!

Dhoom Again..

Warning: This blog is sprayed with a few chosen spoilers. I have tried to write without giving away much. But if you still think its a risk, don't bother reading further!!

And so it was a pleasant night in New Orleans and my cousin and I decided to stick to our original plans of watching Dhoom II that night with her friends. We got there early enough for the 9:45PM show and good too. The theatre filled up briskly enough and a few trailers later we were underway... The first robbery strikes you as downright cheeky and I found it almost impossible to digest. And soon, I thought up of a few flaws in the ploy and started vocalizing it when suddenly I had an epiphany -- Leave the brains behind and enjoy the movie!!!

One if the things that struck early and struck hard was how good Hrithik was looking. He was smoking H-O-T! Even men could probably find enough to ogle at -- a tanned, 6-pack ab treat, shirtless enough of the time, just made my day (or night!) To top it, Bips was looking gorgeous too.. She was smouldering and looked a million bucks. This mismatched pair sold out what might be the real-life couple! All in all, I liked the fact that everyone looked soo earthy and brown, rather than the pale-heroine look that most women have been getting over the years. This look made them look appealing and fresh in a very earthy manner and well, made you eat your heart out!

Performance-wise -- Hrithik really needed this movie. Though Krrish was a hit God-knows-why, you can be guaranteed he worked up a decent performance here. Abhi baby has never been short of performances, however, here he looks constipated in almost all of the song sequences and his dances never stood a chance against Hrithik anyways. Aishwarya Rai once more proved that she was the bimbo variety and could'nt act for nuts. Her introduction was a total disaster and proved once more why good-looking people should stick to the ramp and not wander over to the silver screen! But I warn all u Ash fans and oglers, there's nothing even on that department here. She looks quite shabby and her character is very very bimbo like with an annoying parlance specific to her in this movie. Gosh! Maybe the position for bimbo-hood or whatever it is that it is called didn't feel filled enough for the director. He came up with a way of reducing Bips' perfectly well formed charcater into a twin bimbo! Why?!?!? Uday was his usual self with a bunch of well-timed crack-ups that made it more entertaining.. Some things didnt change from the previous movie!

The plots are great, some of them leave you feeling wonderous about the ingenious thinking on the visual design front (always a good feeling!) ...The stunts are unbelievable (exactly that - great to look at, totally flawed at logic and not worth 2 hoots of science - Einstein n Newton can be found turning in their graves!), the cinematography terrific and the action, good. The music was a letdown after the catchy numbers of Dhoom I. A couple of numbers, Dhoom Again and Crazy Kiya Re are the only ones that stick to your head... But the background score is rocking and leaves you humming forever!! The choreography was great and all in all, the movie is a total masala flick, all entertainment... It lasted about 2hrs 45 min and ran soo smoothly that you hardly felt the time pass. One of the major improvements over its prequel was the cut in the final chase sequence which was annoyingly long in the former. Here it is crisp and is over before you know it. I am not going to give anything more away... I am just going to conclude by saying - Dhoom II - definite babe magnet (Hrithik hasn't ever looked more appealing and for me, he was the show-stealer!) - A complete entertainer, a total worthwhile watch....