Movie review: 'Kochadaiiyaan'

'Kochadaiiyaan'
U; Action/adventure/history
Director: Soundarya Rajinikanth
Cast: Rajinikanth, Deepika Padukone, Shobana, Jackie Shroff, Nasser

'Kochadaiiyaan' is a new experiment in Indian films and it is bound to be received with a mixed response.

Soundarya Rajinikanth Ashwin rather daringly chooses her debut directorial venture starring her father in an animated form.

Kochadaiiyaan is India's first motion capture photo realistic 3D animated film. This technology, which obviously involves lot of money and time, is still in a nascent stage and that shows in Soundarya's film.

While the film manages to successfully capture the legendary Rajnikanth's much loved expressions and mannerisms, it ends up being pretty average on the technical front.

The jerky action and lack of eyeball movements of characters breaks the flow of the story and tells us that we have a long way to go before we reach the technical excellence of Hollywood films. How and why they managed to make the gorgeous Deepika Padukone look like her own 'Ugly Betty' version is beyond comprehension.

Having said that, the film does manage to tell you an entertaining story (written by K.S. Ravikumar). It starts with the narration with a voiceover by Amitabh Bachchan telling you the story of a fearless warrior, Rana (Rajini), who tricks the king (Nasser) of one kingdom, Kalingapuri, to protect the soldiers of his motherland, Kottaipattinam.

Rana is the hero we expect Rajinikanth to be. The story is fast-paced, the narration is compact, the dance sequences like the one with Deepika Padukone and the Rudra Thandavam are spell binding and of course, if you are a Rajini fan, you will still manage to get ensnared by his animated magic. AR Rahman's music adds to the effect.

But unfortunately, the poor production values of this highly ambitious film override all the positives and you come out of the theatre wishing for a lot more.