Star heroine Samantha- Gunasekhar’s mythological drama, Shakuntalam is scheduled for a grand release today in Telugu Hindi and other Southern languages. Let’s see how it fares.
Story: The story takes off with the period setup where shakuntala and Dev Mohan as Dushyanta, the king of Puru dynasty cross paths with each other and fall in love.
Rishi Vishwamitra lives in the forest with her teacher, Rishi Kanva. She meets King Dushyant, falls in love, gets married and has a baby. But due to a sage’s curse, Dushyant forgets all about Shakuntala, until destiny brings them together again. What is the key conflict point of the story? Forms the crucial crux of the story.
Performances: Samantha is cute with her looks and carries away the given trust worthy character with almost ease and perfection.
She literally carries the given character with amazing screen presence and outstanding aura which is clearly visible on the screen.Her experience in doing the female oriented roles helped the film to an extent.
Not only does she look elegant on screen with her given character, Samantha even impresses with her emotionally coated acting in the film.
Other artists such as Dev Mohan and Mohan Babu are okay in their limited roles. Malayalam actor Dev Mohan makes an impressive Telugu debut and has limited screen presence.
Mohan Babu is fine in his hyped character which lacks an impact on the film as his impact is limited to a couple of scenes.
Other artists such as Aditi Balan, Dev Mohan as Dushyanta, the king of Puru dynasty along with Jisshu Sengupta, Madhoo, Gautami, Aditi Balan and Ananya Nagalla are apt in supporting roles.
Allu Arha is a surprise package for the film as did her limited yet impactful character with outstanding screen presence in the role of her prince Bharat. The camera fear is not visible in the close up shots as well which is the best part of the Shakuntalam.
Technicalities: The music work by main Sharma is decent as he used his experience in moulding as a decent watch.
The cinematography by Sekhar V. Joseph is cringe as most of the film gives a feel of watching a cartoonist low grade product. Nothing wrong when coming to Sekhar v Joseph’s work as the main culprit here is completely senior director Gunasekhar’s story and screenplay.
It’s best to talk the least of the VFX work as the film hardly lacks the impressive take on the proceedings.
The editing work by Prawin Pudi has nothing to do with the presentation as the film lacks gripping connectivity.
The production design work is impactless and so is the case with the production values for this highly-anticipated mythological drama.
Analysis: Low grade VFX makes us feel like we are watching a cartoon mixed with reality scenes.
War scenes feel ike a spoof and feel like be available and adding to it the drama is also forced and mostly flat and diluted without emotional connectivity can be termed as a major drawback for the film.
Dialogues are also a huge minus for the film. It feels like almost every dialogue tries to be poetic but it becomes irritating and impact-less.
A Poor mythological drama with awful VFX and a boring scene creation makes the film even more dull.
No real positives to talk about in this film apart from decent music and a few okayish scenes. War sequences are comical. Narration is slow and boring with cartoonish visuals. Disaster is a small word to explore the film as is a wasted opportunity completely. Yet another demerit for Shakuntalam is the current generation has no idea about who is Shakuntalam and her backstory due which the entire efforts by Gunasekhar goes into wine. Overall, Shakuntalam instantly grabs everyone’s attention with its lavish scale but soon disappoints with its uneven presentation and unengaging narrative.
Verdict: Grand scale Creates an impact!
Rating: 2.5/5
