KAASHMORA

 

Cast: Karthi, Nayanthara, Sri Divya

Direction: Gokul

Music: Santosh Narayanan

Long long ago, there was a king. The king had 13 mighty warriors and leading those 13 was Raj Nayak. Raj Nayak brought pride, wealth and a lot of other smaller kingdoms to his King. But like in all tales, all great things must come to an end. Shifting to the present, there's Kaashmora, a fraud who feeds on people's fear and ignorance. In this Gokul's fantasy, both worlds meet. What follows is a tale of magic, ghosts, humour and visual magnificence.

As a performer, Karthi must have surely loved the parts he has bagged in this film. The scope the story has for both his characters, Kaashmora and Raj Nayak are multi-layered and huge. The story definitely provides Karthi a huge opportunity to show his flexibility as an actor and he has evidentially done it with full heart. He brims with energy throughout the movie. His performance in the pre-interval, where he gets locked up in the palace, is one of the best moments in the film. As Kaashmora he brings a lot of laughter and as Raj Nayak, he brings the best of villainy and heroism.

With him carrying the movie almost alone, the rest of the cast has only minor parts to play. In these brief scopes, Vivek and Muruganantham score the most with their wits and expressions.

Nayanthara, despite being a proven performer,  appears for hardly 30 minutes and seem heavily under-utilised. On the other hand, that's enough time for her to woo her massive male fan base into submission. She oozes with grace and beauty.

Another noticeable plus of Kaashmora is its visual grandeur, balanced by a well-done cinematography, almost perfect visual effects, grand artwork and over the top, but vibrant and elegant costumes.

But like all things that's where the positives end. While the efforts are commendable, the script is a very light hearted, easy going one, excessively depended on the dialogues and performances. The first half takes its time to shape up and the initial going of the movie, with its pure Tamil and the stereotypical cryptic verses, penned with the only intention to keep the audiences confused, doesn't set a good engaging start.

Santosh Narayanan experiments with his background scores a bit more than usual. And this time around, there are moments where you tend to enjoy the music more than the sequences and there might also be one or two moments where you might wonder if the music is really in sync with the situations or is it something that is far from our musical understanding.

Overall, Kaashmora has its moments of humour, experimentation and grandeur, but it doesn't hold us tight enough to not get distracted.