Kaal review
KAAL (2005)
With Shah Rukh Khan and Karan Johar producing, a chilling title, as well as a mini-galaxy of stars associated with a film, one would have to say this was 2005’s proverbial “one film that you don’t want to miss”. Whether this turned out to be such, or the one film that you WOULD want to miss you will know by the end of this review.
Kaal shares some similarities, namely tigers, to Hollywood’s 1996 release The Ghost and the Darkness, but to compare them would be unfair to both films.
Set in the Jim Corbett National Park (which for some strange reason was called the Orbit Park in the film), Kaal tells the story of some visitors to the park who all become entrapped in the mystery of random deaths of humans, and all claws, or shall I say fingers, point to the tigers who live on the reserve. Among the aforementioned lot are the husband and wife couple of Krish (John Abraham) and Riya Thapar (Esha Deol), who are apparently working for National Geographic, Dev Malhotra (Vivek Oberoi), a cocky and arrogant rich boy, Ishika (Lara Dutta), the surname-less girlfriend of Dev, and their two random friends who everyone can predict are in the movie as tiger-food. While at the park they are aided in battling the animals by a self-appointed ruler of the jungle, Kali Pratap Singh (Ajay Devgan).
Performance-wise, Ajay Devgan breezes through the role of Kali with ease. Devgan has done this a million times and it seemed as if he was working on 50% effort. The former National Award winner for Best Actor puts on a clinic for Abraham and Oberoi, and it was his sensational entry into the film near about the 40 minute mark that lifted the till then mundane and yawn-worthy film. Devgan’s dialogue delivery is crisp and his character is probably the only properly developed one in the film.
John Abraham as Krish Thapar gives a sincere performance. The females will love his bare-chested entry into the film running towards Esha Deol before some snake made her role into a guest appearance. Abraham is a wonderful actor but as always he suffers from a very shallow character sketch, an infection that would afflict the rest of the cast from herein after. For some reason Abraham is made to spend almost the entire film smoking a cigarette, and that didn’t help his cause too much either.
Esha Deol gives a good effort, but Riya Thapar had very little personality. She was allegedly supposedly to be an ace photographer in the film but after the first few frames Deol wasn’t seen near a camera. Her clothing or lack thereof, made one wonder whether she had previously ever visited any nature parks.
Vivek Oberoi is simply poor in the film. Dev Malhotra tries hard to come across as an arrogant, cocky and overconfident guy with a heart of gold. He succeeds in coming across as simply irritating. Oberoi looks amateur in this film and it’s hard to believe this was the same guy who gave far superior efforts in Company and Dum.
Lara Dutta suffers the most at having no depth in her character. Her character doesn’t even have a surname!!!! Ishika is purportedly Dev’s girlfriend but basically Ishika provides most of the sound-effects in terms of shrieking, screaming, desperate female who is mortified of animals.
As for the other extras in this film, most, if not all, did well in fulfilling their roles of becoming tiger food. Poor chaps seemed marked for their Kaal once word got around that tigers were killing humans.
First time director Soham Shah does have a few things going for him in his debut venture. Much to this reviewer’s relief there were no songs throughout the film. Both hit tracks from the movie were used at the peripheries, with Kaal Dhamaal at the beginning and Tauba Tauba at the end.
Soham also does well in making the viewer be somewhat terrified, though the viewer that he may land most success with will be the adolescent female. Finally Soham does well in ensuring that Kaal remains a somewhat action-thriller-mystery and he resists the temptation of packing in too much romance and drama and melodrama and comedy into it. Kaal stays true to being a horror film in terms of the caricature-like coincidences that everyone but the cast themselves see.
Kaal falls flat on many angles.
First of all none of the characters are really developed, and there is little background on them. The viewer just doesn’t feel any link to them and the disconnect is obvious. Even the so-called real protagonists of the film, the tigers, have not been given enough screen time.
This leads to the second point of contention. Somewhere along the film the tigers go from being murderers and beasts to almost being non-existent. The fact that they are heard more than seen in the second half of the film almost reveals and resigns Kaal to being just another whodunit. Editing may have killed off the tigers and the novelty of the film being a humans versus animals thriller is lost in the second half.
Kaal has a wafer-thin plot with enough holes to make any golf fanatic happy. What is incomprehensible is why our cast was “lost” in a National Park? I would assume there would be lots of guides and signs and trails. Why was Devgan the self-appointed King of the Jungle, when in fact they were supposed to be in a nature reserve and NOT a jungle? How could Lara Dutta be so injured one minute that she was being carried in a stretcher and then the next minute she was seen running out an exploding building? And the list goes on and on.
Somewhere just after the intermission it becomes predictable and Kaal’s Kaal beckons it to a hasty end, not before the usual action and screaming sequences though.
One would have thought with Karan Johar’s guiding presence near at hand and Shah Rukh Khan’s name associated with the flick, there would be some memorable moments coming out of Kaal, but sadly this 2 hour venture leaves you wondering whether performers read the scripts to their work or only sign keeping in mind the banner associated with the project.
Watch it if you must, but on DVD, and have your remote handy. If you forward the non-dialogue parts you can probably finish it up in an hour. I would still recommend some exercise or sleep in that time though.
With Shah Rukh Khan and Karan Johar producing, a chilling title, as well as a mini-galaxy of stars associated with a film, one would have to say this was 2005’s proverbial “one film that you don’t want to miss”. Whether this turned out to be such, or the one film that you WOULD want to miss you will know by the end of this review.
Kaal shares some similarities, namely tigers, to Hollywood’s 1996 release The Ghost and the Darkness, but to compare them would be unfair to both films.
Set in the Jim Corbett National Park (which for some strange reason was called the Orbit Park in the film), Kaal tells the story of some visitors to the park who all become entrapped in the mystery of random deaths of humans, and all claws, or shall I say fingers, point to the tigers who live on the reserve. Among the aforementioned lot are the husband and wife couple of Krish (John Abraham) and Riya Thapar (Esha Deol), who are apparently working for National Geographic, Dev Malhotra (Vivek Oberoi), a cocky and arrogant rich boy, Ishika (Lara Dutta), the surname-less girlfriend of Dev, and their two random friends who everyone can predict are in the movie as tiger-food. While at the park they are aided in battling the animals by a self-appointed ruler of the jungle, Kali Pratap Singh (Ajay Devgan).
Performance-wise, Ajay Devgan breezes through the role of Kali with ease. Devgan has done this a million times and it seemed as if he was working on 50% effort. The former National Award winner for Best Actor puts on a clinic for Abraham and Oberoi, and it was his sensational entry into the film near about the 40 minute mark that lifted the till then mundane and yawn-worthy film. Devgan’s dialogue delivery is crisp and his character is probably the only properly developed one in the film.
John Abraham as Krish Thapar gives a sincere performance. The females will love his bare-chested entry into the film running towards Esha Deol before some snake made her role into a guest appearance. Abraham is a wonderful actor but as always he suffers from a very shallow character sketch, an infection that would afflict the rest of the cast from herein after. For some reason Abraham is made to spend almost the entire film smoking a cigarette, and that didn’t help his cause too much either.
Esha Deol gives a good effort, but Riya Thapar had very little personality. She was allegedly supposedly to be an ace photographer in the film but after the first few frames Deol wasn’t seen near a camera. Her clothing or lack thereof, made one wonder whether she had previously ever visited any nature parks.
Vivek Oberoi is simply poor in the film. Dev Malhotra tries hard to come across as an arrogant, cocky and overconfident guy with a heart of gold. He succeeds in coming across as simply irritating. Oberoi looks amateur in this film and it’s hard to believe this was the same guy who gave far superior efforts in Company and Dum.
Lara Dutta suffers the most at having no depth in her character. Her character doesn’t even have a surname!!!! Ishika is purportedly Dev’s girlfriend but basically Ishika provides most of the sound-effects in terms of shrieking, screaming, desperate female who is mortified of animals.
As for the other extras in this film, most, if not all, did well in fulfilling their roles of becoming tiger food. Poor chaps seemed marked for their Kaal once word got around that tigers were killing humans.
First time director Soham Shah does have a few things going for him in his debut venture. Much to this reviewer’s relief there were no songs throughout the film. Both hit tracks from the movie were used at the peripheries, with Kaal Dhamaal at the beginning and Tauba Tauba at the end.
Soham also does well in making the viewer be somewhat terrified, though the viewer that he may land most success with will be the adolescent female. Finally Soham does well in ensuring that Kaal remains a somewhat action-thriller-mystery and he resists the temptation of packing in too much romance and drama and melodrama and comedy into it. Kaal stays true to being a horror film in terms of the caricature-like coincidences that everyone but the cast themselves see.
Kaal falls flat on many angles.
First of all none of the characters are really developed, and there is little background on them. The viewer just doesn’t feel any link to them and the disconnect is obvious. Even the so-called real protagonists of the film, the tigers, have not been given enough screen time.
This leads to the second point of contention. Somewhere along the film the tigers go from being murderers and beasts to almost being non-existent. The fact that they are heard more than seen in the second half of the film almost reveals and resigns Kaal to being just another whodunit. Editing may have killed off the tigers and the novelty of the film being a humans versus animals thriller is lost in the second half.
Kaal has a wafer-thin plot with enough holes to make any golf fanatic happy. What is incomprehensible is why our cast was “lost” in a National Park? I would assume there would be lots of guides and signs and trails. Why was Devgan the self-appointed King of the Jungle, when in fact they were supposed to be in a nature reserve and NOT a jungle? How could Lara Dutta be so injured one minute that she was being carried in a stretcher and then the next minute she was seen running out an exploding building? And the list goes on and on.
Somewhere just after the intermission it becomes predictable and Kaal’s Kaal beckons it to a hasty end, not before the usual action and screaming sequences though.
One would have thought with Karan Johar’s guiding presence near at hand and Shah Rukh Khan’s name associated with the flick, there would be some memorable moments coming out of Kaal, but sadly this 2 hour venture leaves you wondering whether performers read the scripts to their work or only sign keeping in mind the banner associated with the project.
Watch it if you must, but on DVD, and have your remote handy. If you forward the non-dialogue parts you can probably finish it up in an hour. I would still recommend some exercise or sleep in that time though.
posted by SIAII at 10:48 PM
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