Even the biggest fans of director Gokul’s previous hit Idharkuthane Aasaipattai Balakumara (of which I am one) were taken by surprise to see Karthi’s Kattappa-esque warlord attire in the first look poster of Kaashmora . With all the trappings of an historical epic in ‘post-Baahubali’ South Indian cinema, it just didn’t seem the kind of film you’d want to see from a director who’d sold you a hilarious comedy about a good-for-nothing named Sumar Moonji Kumar.
The first hour into Kaashmora and these fans are rest assured that Gokul is still in home territory. The comedy is crackling. Kaashmora (Karthi), a godman, connects tubes from his ashram to a tea shop, just so offerings of milk go straight into a cup of tea. Offerings of eggs too, slip right through these tubes into preparations of kothu parotta . If Sumar Moonji Kumar was reckless, Kaashmora is his smarter uncle.
Kaashmora is in the business of selling fear, and with the help of an equally crooked family (Vivekh is fantastic as his father), he gets to the top of his game, becoming the personal godman to a state minster. He aspires to make the Guinness Books by freeing, not one, but 1000 ghosts at one time. In short, Kaashmora is the likable fraud you don’t ever want your sister to meet. As long as we are in his presence, the film remains a breeze.
But the director has bigger plans for Kaashmora . Like the two weaker tracks (a sales executive’s love story and another about a dying pregnant woman) in Idharkuthane Aasaipattai Balakumara, Kaashmora too deviates from the whimsical to the ambitious.
In essence, Kaashmora too is three ideas. The director doesn’t have the mastery to seamlessly manoeuvre a connection between a light caper, an elaborate war drama, and an exorcism. And in this transition, the cracks in this big-budget film’s technical aspects become evident too. Tacky special effects, that were pardonable in a comedy, suddenly become sins in the heavy duty war scenes.
It’s a film you want to remember for the joyous satisfaction it left us with before the intermission. For all the hype and intrigue it generated for selling itself as an epic, it’s sad that the faults too lie here. For now, the blame must go on Gokul, who just doesn’t seem to be happy becoming our version of the Farrelly Brothers. He wants to be a Coen and one half of a Wachowski too.
