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Saturday, August 02, 2008

Kuselan: Out of Focus

Dolphins in Malayoor, you must be kidding. Superstar is shooting for Annamalai Part II or Chandramukhi Part II, not both. Z Category black cats is headed by overweight Senthil Nathan, now thats really crosses the line.
What was Vasu thinking?

When i watched Kuselan, i was constantly thinking what was running in the director's mind. Surely he couldn't beleive this was a great movie. Either he assumed we were naive and just having Rajni would satisfy our appetite or he thought we were dumb to notice the subtle potholes and visible disconnects in the movie.
He got so caught up with his success of Chandramukhi, which i have to admit was a good venture, that he had to stuff Kuselan with it and expected it to fly. Only the movie dint take off at all.

I walked into a packed theater in San Jose and was ready with confetti to greet the Superstar in Silicon Valley. Clearly i dint know there were so many Indians and Tamilians living here and was shocked with the efforts they had taken to promote the movie. Towards the last fifteen minute run, there were groans ,catcalls and witty comments by us. We couldnt wait for the movie to end, it was a treat to watch the Superstar but that was not good enough. Where the hell was the story we were promised?

I dont want to dig into the movie since am sure you can read the synopsis from the official website, but this was a good story. A poor village barber and a larger than life hero, bonded as school buddies. Rajni was doing the cameo and this was close to his real life persona but why was he called Ashok Kumar? Why dint they even have a fifteen minute flashback of their early days? How could Meena look so perfect with mascara when she was a barber's wife with no bank balance? Surely, she is a better actress. Why do we have Nayan dancing in the rain suddenly? Vadivelu was loud and where did he lose his sense of humour?Mayil Sami, Manobala, Thyagu, Krishnan, Vijayakumar, Nizhagal Ravi and Prabhu never saw the light of the day.

Vasu wanted to give us the movie which had Rajni as-is. His focus was the Superstar and Chandramukhi. Pasupathy, the only relief in the movie who did some real acting, dint stand a chance. He was teary eyed and trembling inside out most of the time. The movie is a dampner and the director should learn from this mistake. This could have been one of the movies where we would fondly remember Rajni and see it several times to grin at his charm. Unfortunately, nobody in their right mind would do that. This is one of those off-the-shelf movies which we would forget in a week.

Kuselan - Out of focus.

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