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| Edited By: Udita Jhunjhunwala |Source: DNA |Updated: Nov 19, 2013, 11:17 PM IST
There is one over-riding hook to Dasavatar, which can be enjoyed no matter which language you watch it in — and that is counting the 10 avatars Kamal Haasan plays in this film that he has also written.
Dasavatar is the Hindi version of the Tamil film which immediately explains the hysterical and high-pitched character of Radha (Asin), de rigueur in Tamil movies but an ear-sore in Hindi.
The plot goes this way. The story begins sometime in the present, travel back to the 12 century AD where a priest called Rangaraja Nambi (avatar 1) at the Chidambaram temple complex is executed for his faith in Lord Vishnu. We then move ahead many centuries to the leadership of George W Bush (avatar 2) and a bio-weapons lab in the US where a series of events leads to a global crisis centred around scientist Govinda Somaya (avatar 3).
The setting moves from USA to India as Govinda is engaged in a stressful search for a bio-weapon of mass destruction. Events unfold over four days till the tsunami strikes Asia on December 26, 2004. But the story-telling is so self-serving and the length of the film is so painful (almost three hours) that you feel you have been trapped in the theatre for three days.
During this period we meet seven more versions of Kamal Haasan — as a Punjabi singer, a Japanese martial arts expert, an American agent, a journalist, a very tall man called Kalifulla Khan etc.
Haasan looks best as Avtaar Singh, the Sikh singer, and Bush. His make up and appearance as the old woman Krishnavathi Badki is enough to give children nightmares. His Bengali investigator Pranab Kundu sounds more like a Nepali watchman who has spent too long in Chennai. Nine of the characters are linked, however tenuously, to the plot.
Some scenes and tracks could easily have been edited out had it not been for the 10 avatars gimmick. Once you have figured those out, there’s little appeal left except maybe watching Mallika Sherawat as a bar-dancing former secret agent getting beat up.
Self-indulgent, with shoddy special effects, unimaginative prosthetics, Dasavatar earns points only for the scale of production and for Haasan’s audacity in embarking on something this ambitious and self-serving.
Dasavatar
Cast: Kamal Haasan, Asin, Jaya Prada, Mallika Sherawat
Director: KS Ravikumar
Rating: * 1/2
