Kalavathi Movie Review
Sundar’s horror comedy Aranmanai was a huge hit in Tamilnadu and did fairly well in Telugu as Chandrakala. Now he comes up with a sequel to it. In Tamil it was titled Aranmanai 2 but in Telugu makers have gone for a new name, Kalavathi. Sundar tries to sell this off as a new film with new premise, but nothing has changed except for few actors and the packaging.
Story :
Murali (Siddharth) is shocked to hear that his father (Radharavi) met with an accident and comes to his ancestral home. Little did he know about the house being haunted by some evil spirit that also caused the freak accident to his father. Strange things continue to happen and his friend Ravi (Sundar) comes to rescue. They learn about the evil spirit that is creating problems in the house. The back story of that spirit and how Murali and Ravi overcomes it forms rest of the story.
Performances:
Siddharth is too good an actor to play such a stock character. He does his best to fit into this setup and succeeds to an extent. Sid gets to star in most of the songs but Sundar’s character dominates the show. He is just okay as an actor. Trisha sizzled in the beach song and later did a fine job with the ghost portrayal. Hansika is good. Poonam Bajwa adds a bit of extra glamour to the film. Suri and Kovai Sarala comedic love story is targeted at the masses.
Technicalities:
Sundar sticks with the template that is the fodder for many horror films. He knows his audience very well and doesn’t mind to go overboard to please them. This film looks like a nineties film in terms of taking and execution, but still works at times just because of the formula. Sundar managed to pull it off for the most part, but a bit of variety could have helped.
Music is pretty bad and cinematographer’s work is standard. Editing is alright. The film is stretched tad too much which doesn’t help it in anyway. Production values are good.
Thumbs Up:
- Comedy scenes
- Horror Element
- Glamour
Thumbs Down:
- Cliched story
- Dated making style
- VFX
Analysis:
A pregnant lady and her husband were killed under the name of honor and she sets out to take revenge. This is the basic plot of this film. Sundar sticks to the formula that has worked zillion times and firmly believed that it would work again. Well, it did, going by the response of the frontbenchers. There is a pathetic attempt at the comedy that is again an excuse of playing it to the galleries.
Suri and Kovai Sarala somehow managed to make this stupid comedy work with their antics and one-liners. Real fun that everybody can enjoy only comes in the pre climatic portions. Comedy works at times but the horror element is not effective due to predictable narration. How can anyone be scared when they could predict the outcome of every scene before hand?
Sundar is known for making commercial potboilers and he puts his experience to good use by signing up lot of frontline actors. His ploy nearly worked as the actors did save the movie from tripping. Kalavathi could have been a better film if it had better technical values and a proper script. It may still work because of Sundar’s ‘play it safe’ philosophy. Kalavathi also is the better film among this week’s releases, which is going to boost its box office prospects.
Verdict: Kalavathi is full-on Horror Masala.
