Chandramukhi 2(Tamil)
Starring Raghava Lawrence. Kangana Ranaut , Lakshmi Menon ,Vadivelu, Raadhika Sarathkumar, Mahima Nambiar, Srushti Dange, Rao Ramesh, Subiksha Krishnan, Suresh Chandra Menon, Ravi Mariya, Vignesh, Y.G.Mahendran
Directed by P Vasu
Rating: *
A sequel to a bad film makes as much sense as molar surgery twice for the same tooth. If the truth be told Chandramukhi with its curdled cretinous concept of comedy-horror which came 18 years ago should have been dead and buried. To say the resurrection is redundant would be an understatement.
A shrieking banshee of a film, Chandramukhi 2 is more a series of hysterical skits on schizophrenia being passed off as stories of horror-possession. The horror of it is not so much that Kangana Ranaut plays a woman possessed at a pitch high enough to shatter eardrums. The real horror is that she comes into the picture at the fag-end when audiences have either abandoned the project or are so upset with what they have been subjected to that even an appearance by Elizabeth Taylor wouldn’t have helped.
Kangana ,we are told, was paid Rs 20 crores for her fleeting appearance.For what? That is the mystery that we should explore rather than sit through two hours and thirty-seven minutes of traumatizing tripe, that makes the audience feel like they are trapped in a zoo, with all the antics happening outside the cages.
A large part of the ongoing screaming contest garbed as a fear fest is a typical Tamilian family drama where dozens of actors of every age and size stand in the same frame pretending to be a part of a joint family but looking like gatecrashers at a wedding party.
Sooraj Barjatya started this trend of joint-family montages and he has a lot to answer for. In Chandramukhi 2 Radhika Sarathkumar(some of us remember her, with mixed feelings for her gravity-defying ponytail in the Rishi Kapoor starrer Mera Pati Mera Devta Hai) stands in stately stupor. Her Kancheevaram silks change in every sequence and her neck pieces threaten to touch the floor with every passing shot.
The rest of the family was hard to figure out. There were growling men,groveling women and simpering youngsters of every age. One of the women suddenly flew into the air in a wheelchair (the wheelchair also flew with her) after a tense family discussion: she was probably looking for a way out, just like us.
Which sane person would want to sit through the fusion of confusion and boredom that seeps into our soul just like the spirit of Chandramukhi ?Kangana’s ghost act is chilling for all the wrong reasons, and as mentioned earlier,it arrives after the last guest at the party has left.
The main chunk of the deep-fried footage has gone to Raghav Lawrence who plays guardian to two annoyingly sugary orphan kids. When he has time from his diaper duties he plays a smirking king in the past who has a bitter bickering binge with his bestie over who ‘gets’ Kangana.I hope she got it. I didn’t. What is the purpose of this crude cheesy supernatural thriller where all actors seem possessed, none more so than those who are officially unpossessed.
