Kaasi - Movie Review

'Kaasi', starring Vijay Antony, is out in the theatres today (Friday).  Dubbed from Tamil, this is directed by a woman director.  Let's find out what works and what doesn't.

Story:

Dr. Bharat (Vijay Antony) is perfection and compassion personified.  An accomplished doctor, he lives a happy life with his doting parents.  One fateful day, he is told that the parents are not actual parents.  They have only brought him up.

Bharat flies to India to meet his biological parents.  His mother Parvathy is long dead.  His father is the only one he can meet.  Bharat turns Dr. Kaasi in Kancherlapalem in his search for the elusive dad.  

There in the village, he joins hands with a comic resident (played by Yogi Babu) and searches for his dad.  The rest of the story is about what he does to find him.

Analysis:

A couple of days before Kaasi's release, the makers released the footage of the film's first seven minutes.  They called it a bold move.  We feel they should have released the last seven minutes and advertised it as the boldest-ever decision in the annals of Indian history.  It would have made no difference, for most of 'Kaasi' is anyway about irrelevant sub-stories that have nothing to do with the main story, the climax, the hero's character or even his stethoscope.  They are there because our hero chooses trial and error method in finding his father before he falls back on science in the pre-climax phase.   

Kaasi is a left-hander.  Like an Einstein, he discovers that the village's President too is a left-hander. "He must be my father," the mind-blowing hero tells comedian Yogi Babu.  They both go to him.  They make the President drink to his heart's content so that he will spill the beans about his past.  He does.  A flashback begins.  Twenty-eight years ago, when the President was a college-goer, he fell in love with a woman.  This woman, our hero suspects, is his mother.  Yogi Babu imagines our hero in the President's place because the President is too odd to be in his imagination.  We have nothing more to say about this appalling and fundamentally nonsensical episode, which consumes most of the first half and much of our brain!  

As a surgeon, Kaasi's success rate is 99 percent.  As a son in search of his father, his failure rate is 99 percent.  It's because 9.9 out of 10 times, he meets the wrong persons, puts them the wrong kind of questions, and the right kind of questions too late in the night.  

As the story progresses, we are convinced about one thing.  The hero may or may not meet his father (given his idiocy, he shouldn't have), but he will definitely go back to the US with lots of memories of so many jokers whom he willingly and happily meets in Kancherlapalem.  

Every single young woman in the story seems to fall in love with Vijay Antony's characters in a split second.  Anjali (as Valli) is smitten by him.  Because he just told her this much: 'Try to be responsible'.  Another woman falls in love with a bandit (Vijay Antony, again).   She falls in love with him so fast that we couldn't notice the reason because of the jet speed at which this love blossoms.

We are also convinced that the screenplay is just an excuse to showcase Vijay Antony in different get-ups.  He gets to grow a thick beard, he gets to be clean-shaven and wear spectacles, he gets to be a Romeo.  It would have helped to do a web series with an anthology of stories.  Vijay would at least have got some laurels.  

Vijay's attempt to do some comedy falls flat.  His chemistry with Anjali is awful.  Yogi Babu saves some moments.  Sunaina, Jayaprakash and others are forgettable.  Nasser is seen in a stupid cameo.  

The technical departments are found wanting, especially Richard Nathan's cinematography.  Vijay's BGM packs some emotional punch, but the songs are a no-no.

Bottomline:

'Kaasi' is riddled with unconnected sub-plots, ridiculous characters.  Most of the story unfolds in the climax and it unfolds like a listless Wikipedia post.  Impossible to connect with it emotionally.