Kochadaiiyaan

I remember after watching Avatar, for the first time I saw ALL of the audience sitting until end of the credits.

Today, I saw it happening again for the first time for a Tamil movie. Malaysian Indians being very conservative, I was even surprised to see some of the ladies (not girls) clapping at the end of the credits. I have never seen it happen for an Indian movie in Malaysia. That shows the brilliance of this movie.

I loved it, some scenes such as between the father and son before the father is killed even made me shed tears. The Dance of Shiva and the fight scene of Princess Vadhana fighting with 'villain' stands out for me. I'm thinking of going for a second show, the first for me for a Tamil film.

Loved it.

"Kochadaiiyaan" as a Rajinikanth film has all the elements to satisfy his fans. It has a grand introduction scene, which is followed by an extremely inspiring song, breathtaking stunt sequences, mass appealing dialogues and most importantly the superstar himself in three larger- than-life roles, doing everything that's impossible to do in real life. But "Kochadaiiyaan" as an animated feature, which is made using motion capture technology, fails to live up to the expectations of all those who watch a Rajinikanth film just for the sake of entertainment.

We have a tried-and-tested revenge story. A son has to avenge the murder of his father, who was killed trying to protect the lives of thousands of soldiers of a kingdom. Rajinikanth plays both son and father; Rana and Kochadaiiyaan, respectively.

The problem is not with the film's story because a Rajinikanth film never has a story. It's always about him and what he does on screen to entertain his fans. Sometimes even the most stupid act pulled off by the superstar will make a houseful of audience applaud in merriment. Such moments were missing or were limited in "Kochadaiiyaan", which heavily suffered from creating an emotional connect with the characters.

Every time Rajinikanth and Deepika hugged, you couldn't feel the passion in their romance. It looked as though two cartoon characters were made to romance one another. Because of this even in the most emotional scenes of the film, you feel emotionally disconnected. Several artificial instances such as these make the film boring and the characters lifeless. All this makes you come to the conclusion that the film would've worked wonderfully if it was a live action feature. Come to think of it, "Kochadaiiyaan" would've definitely looked magnificent in live action form than in the half baked animated format that only looks colorful but not legendary.

In layman's terminology, motion capture technology is supposed to recreate real characters as realistic as possible in reel. But most of the characters suffered from identity crisis and you could only identity them from their voices. Actors such as Aadi and Sarath Kumar were the terribly looking animated characters on screen, while the rest such as Nasser, Deepika and Jackie at least had some major references to be related with their real self. The biggest problem with the characters was their eyes, which mostly looked dead. Eyes speak a lot about a person's emotions and because most of the characters had dead eyes, we couldn't build an emotional bond with them.

Rajinikanth was recreated to near perfection. Of course, there were certain issues with some of his physical features but he looked overall satisfying. Most importantly, his mannerisms were intact in the animated format and that was one of highlights of the film and it certainly gave audiences a reason to love the film at regular intervals.

Rahman is the film's biggest saving grace and it's his music and background score that breathes life into the film. The songs looked visually spectacular but their placement sometimes affects the film's narrative. Another highlight of the film was its extremely short running time of 118 minutes. It's a rarity to see such a short Rajinikanth film but that might just work in the favor of "Kochadaiiyaan", which could've irked the audiences with extended running time.

Hardcore Rajinikanth fans will enjoy the film once but even for them revisiting it is nearly impossible.

Me having at least minimum knowledge about how tough & challenging it is to make a film like this one, I can surely call it an 'EPIC', proudly! As I borrow the words of Amitabh Bachchan , "100 years of Indain cinema will now be called as 'After Kochadaiyaan' and 'Before Kochadaiyaan'" are so really true. Yes, this movie really deserves a great applause, ignore about how or what the story is but the attempt and hard work that went into the making of this film deserves an applause. People who do not have any knowledge about 'Motion Capture' should watch this film in the way it is shown and shouldn't call it a cartoon or something. The only flaw about the film is that there are some disconnected scenes in both the halves and maybe that is due to editing errors. Apart form that, the Cinematography , Sound , VFX and the other tech departments did their best.Super Star Rajnikanth was at his best and his hard core fans will enjoy the 'Shiva Thandav' part. The other actors did justice to their characters. The biggest asset is the Music and BGM by A.R. Rahman which doesn't bore you at any point in the film. The narrative was at good pace.There weren't many 3D shots, just few here and there in action sequences. Go and watch the film with your family, you'll surely enjoy it.

Kochadaiiyaan first performance capture movie in India. It is not an easy thing to create a mega budget animated movie with a good marketing status in India. It is possible only with the presence of Superstars like Rajnikanth. Expectation among the fans were high (Kochadaiiyaan visuals will be similar to Avatar or Adventures of Tintin), anyhow trailer received a mixed response only.

But a historic story with energetic dialogue leads the movie till the end with decent result in this brave attempt. The big name Rajnikanth keeps cheering always. Another big name A.R.Rahman, made an experimental BGM through the movie which keep us attractive.

Positive signs of performance capture technology:

-Absolutely brilliant 3D effects in the action sequences which is new to our fans.

-Legendary actor late Nagesh is recreated.

-Hope in future we can reach the Hollywood movies with a reasonable budget.

Cast also includes Bollywood beauty Deepika Padukone which will be a big box office factor in North India. With this summer Kochadaiiyaan is going to be a good entertaining movie for family audience.

Remember Kochadaiiyaan is not a Hollywood movie like 'The Adventures of Tintin' or 'Avatar' but it is the best Indian animated movie.

Verdict: If you watch the 'Kochadaiiyaan' in big screen defiantly it would be a great experience.

When first announced, it came under several film titles/projects - from "Sultan: The Warrior" to "Rana" (to which is now a prequel/sequel) to finally "Kochaiidaiyaan". It was a brave attempt into a completely unknown territory.

With this, comes the risk one the project being a complete success or a complete failure. I am now thinking of it heading towards the latter, unfortunately.

With a beastly budget of $21 million which for a Tamil/Kollywood film is unprecedented, it would mean that the film would have to perform admirably at the box office the world over to even break even. At this moment in time, it is looking somewhat dim ; $7 million gross since release.

Let's get to the story - the story is, by movie standards, quite standard. Nothing the movie world has not heard before. I found the story quite interesting and with the usual 'love story' we always have in Tamil movies, this is quite refreshing. However, as the movie progressed, the story can be quite coagulated/rigid with little room for one's own interpretation, but thankfully at the end of it all, it does hold up just fine. The story is about kings/kingdoms and quite honestly, is not that often we see it in Tamil movies, so kudos to that. Unfortunately, the 'pitfalls' of a typical Indian movie is here - don't want to sound too harsh but the 'ridiculous' moments does occur. Riding a dolphin and being propelled into the air onto a ship ; really? Haha, quite hilarious but it is moments like this then make you go "What did just see?!" Potential meme in the making. There are other cringe- worthy moments as well, but I'll spare them.

The music - quite possibly the best part of the movie. A.R. Rahman did a brilliant job here (he narrate the Tamil version too). The songs are really good and worth listening over and over again. Highly recommended to purchase the audio CD.

The movie paces itself just fine. However, I felt that instead of a near 2 hours runtime, it should have been trimmed to just over 90 minutes, as with most animated feature movies. I didn't feel the movie 'stretchy' or 'overly long' for an animated movie.

Now comes the hard part - and the most talked about aspect of the movie - the CGI. Has anyone seen 2007's "Beowulf"? If yes, then anything less than this is going to draw criticism. Movie goers are not easy to please these days, and I consider myself highly critical of '...it could have been better' movies. "Kochaiidaiyaan" fails quite squarely in this regard. The CGI is easily 5-7 years behind the tech of the most advanced animated movies - I'm not talking "How to Train Your Dragon" or "Toy Story", but rather the more human-involved/realistic 3D animated movies - the easiest example would be Robert Zemeckis' motion-captured films ("A Christmas Carol", "The Polar Express", etc.). The opening sequence of the movie on the boat - it should have been either removed or simply redone. Not a good way to start the movie. Even video games have better visuals than that. There are certain areas that the CGI shines, Rajini looks the best with little dead eyes compared to other CGI rendered characters. The motion capture technology is there but there are some clunkiness to it. Compared to the ultra high budget "Avatar", the motion capture in "Kochaiidaiyaan" is about half way there. Facial expression and such only effective works in some scenes while others seem more generic/standard. Nothing special about the motion capture here. It's here, it's okay, and nothing to shout about. More work needs to be done to improve the CGI and the director, Soundarya needs to rethink how to do so - either an even bigger budget (which means a higher box office risk) or hire more skilled visual effects work force.

"Kochaiidaiyaan" is an entertaining yet flawed movie. It is a defining moment in Indian cinematic history. Any other full fledged animated movie will always be compared to this movie, for better or for worse. This is a great starting point, but the results isn't that good. Watch it if you are a fan of Rajini or someone who wants to see Indian cinema do something unique. You might be surprised if the movie induces tears in you - as in actually feeling for the characters. This is the part where no amount of tech can achieve, and it comes from the heart of the story. A good attempt. Keep up the good work. I still wholeheartedly prefer live-action to animated. While it is Super Star Rajini doing the acting, you still want to see him in live-action. On a side note, I really did appreciate the inclusion of a 'making of.../bloppers' at the end of the movie.