Exercise in Excess!

A Rajnikanth movie always attracts a lot of pre publicity- the major reason being that the superstar graces the silver screen only once in a while and while he does so, he makes sure he has a great cast and crew to support him. With "Kuselan" (remake of the highly acclaimed Malayalam movie- "Katha Parayumbol"), the expectations were even higher. The Superstar was playing a rags-to-riches Superstar in the movie which is quite like his own story!

It had a great script to start with and when P Vasu, Prabhu, Nayanthara, Pashupathy, Meena, G V Prakash Kumar and the like joined the cast and crew with the backing of K Balachander and G P Vijayakumar as producers, the audience expected another magnum opus. Alas! Only when one watches the movie will one understand how big a disappointment Kuselan is!

This is purely a case of the "Super Star" image of the Super Star ruining what could have been a superb film. Unlike the Malayalam original which had Mammootty appearing for 20 minutes, Kuselan has Rajnikanth on screen for almost an hour and there is nothing material in the script for the star to perform. He is shown as an actor here and due to that reason, you cannot find him doing comedy, performing daring action sequences, but yes, he is shown romancing his lead actress in the movie- the hot n happening Nayanthara who these days is the favorite of Super Stars across all South Indian languages.

In the middle of all this, it is the plot that gets sidelined. Kuselan never really becomes the story of the barber that it purports to start with and due to this reason, Pashupathy and Meena, competent actors themselves, are not able to make an impact on screen. To add to your vows are Vadivelu and Livingston- the antics that they put in would put anyone to shame. One feels sorry for the degradation in the standards of Tamil Cinema and to think that even a Super Star movie requires double innuendos in the name of comedy!

Talking about degradation, one needs to mention Nayanthara in particular. The actor is in a bare- all mood and Arvind Krishna's camera shamelessly lingers on her bosom, bums, thighs and other unmentionable parts of her anatomy! The "chaaral" song which is pleasing to the ears (and the only song that is pleasing to the ears- a very bad job by G V Prakash Kumar here) gets highly irritating when you watch it on screen- first because it springs out of nowhere and second because of the camera which is all over Nayan!

In an effort to provide more screen time to Rajni, P Vasu messes up the script so much so that the emotional speech delivered by Rajni at the end does not touch you anywhere. It is such a hackeneyed script and the scenes progress without any connection with each other. Dialogues do not evoke any emotion, characters are card boardish and production design is fake. The Special Effects used while filming the "Sollamma" song irritates!

Money has been spent like water on what could have been a very simple movie and lots of talent have been wasted by casting competent actors in inconsequential roles (Geetha, Prabhu, Mamta Mohandas, Vijayakumar, Thyagu, O A K Sundar, Santhanabharathy, Manobala)- none of whom manage to make a mark. If things could have started with a well written script (the kind that Sreenivasan had with him), Kuselan would have been a remarkable film like "Katha Parayumbol". Stay away from this one. Katha Parayumbol for the 25th time will be infinitely more entertaining than Kuselan. Lets see what Priyadarshan makes out of "Billoo Barber"!