Kaamuki

Binu S who made his debut with an impressive movie titled Ithihasa, went on to make another film Style which was criticized heavily and some people made a remark that it would have been a financially feasible idea in an industry like Telugu. It seems like those criticism has not bothered the director much and this time he has come up with another wafer thin cheesy idea with the movie Kaamuki. With melodrama and track humor coming along with artificial coolness, Kaamuki is one film you might sit through but won’t want to talk about.

So Achamma is the second girl child of her parents and she was born in an auto when it fell in a gutter (I am wondering about the relevance of all those scenes as I write). Her sister was considered as an obedient girl until she broke her father’s heart. So now the burden of hope is on the shoulders of Achamma. The movie talks about the college life of Achamma where she finds her love and how the burden of expectations plays a role in it.

We are shown the school days of Achamma and there we are seeing her as a young girl who wants to impress men. I don’t have anything against the idea of showing the obsession for some girls in enhancing their breast size. But the presentation has to show the reasons of it rather than stamping a girl as a pervert for the sake of comedy. There are numerous instances of sexism like this in the movie Kaamuki in the name of comedy. The reason for a professor’s regret about divorce is the makeover of his wife. And there is another female character who messages two boys at a time and when gets caught finds another one. Binu S almost gives a high five to Omar Lulu in terms of injecting misogyny in screenplay. But post interval he ends his relation with Lulu and goes to the old DDLJ School of divine love and here a girl falls in love with a blind young man.

You need a properly structured screenplay to convince the audience about the story you want to convey. Here the screenplay is scattered and stuffed. The moment the professor character played by Rahul Nair appears in the movie, I hoped something interesting would happen to the dud plot and to my disappointment the movie had no plans to change. It kept on lingering around sloppy sentiments and depth of friendship without actually making us feel anything for the characters. Binu S has included all the “message” ingredients to make it feel like a movie that is more than entertainment, but sadly those portions are stranded in the screenplay. Cinematography is only interested in the lushness. Music was fine while the background score was a bit old school.

Kaamuki relies heavily on the charm and effortlessness of Aparna Balamurali. But there is an extent to how much she can save a film when the writing isn’t offering her the support. Askar Ali is still struggling with the dialogue delivery and some of the highly melodramatic sentimental dialogues were delivered lifelessly by the actor. Kavya Suresh looks pretty and the actor who portrayed the role of Haris’s friend was fine. Baiju handled his role neatly. There are plenty of other actors in Kaamuki who has not added anything to the movie as their characters were totally irrelevant. To take some names Siby Thomas, Pradeep Kottayam, Aneesh Gopal, Rony David Raj etc belonged to that category.

Kaamuki is a dull and aimless movie that has a lot of noise in the name of entertainment. If you have found Binu’s “Style” as a watchable movie, this might also feel like a watchable one. For me the silliness of the plot and the cheesy sentiments were too much to tolerate.

Rating: 1.5/5

By Aswin Bharadwaj

Founder and editor of Lensmen Reviews.

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