Kasu Mela Kasu Review: A wannabe comedy filled with objectionable ideas

If the title, Kasu Mela Kasu, invokes good memories of Prabhudheva and Kamal Haasan dancing to the evergreen song from Kadhala Kadhala, I am sorry to break it to you that the similarity ends right there. Throughout its painfully long runtime of 130 minutes, this KS Palani-directorial fails to evoke as much as a grin. 

Remember Goundamani’s love track in Rickshaw Mama, where he falls for a girl assuming she is a bank officer, while she is a beggar in reality? Imagine it stretched out into a full-length film, with all the humour sucked out of it, and you’d get Kasu Mela Kasu. 

Director: KS Palani
Cast: Shahrukh, Gayathri Rema, KS Palani, Mayilsamy

The protagonist Murali (Shahrukh) gets a bizarre introduction scene: He’s reading a book with Kamal Haasan on the cover, and you see his face when the book is lowered. He is a spoilt youngster and the girl he falls in love with is a beggar-turned-housemaid. Murali is a man of dark obsessions. He stalks girls and passes lewd racist comments at dark-skinned women, and watches cartoon shows meant for toddlers. What’s weirder is that he is not alone on this mission of ushaar-ing (that’s how they call it) a rich girl; his father is his loveguru and the one who chooses girls for his son to pursue.

Meanwhile, the lady at whose house heroine Myna (Gayathri Rema) works, advises her to love any stalker, and says it’s her only way to leave behind her family of beggars. Scarily enough, she takes these words to heart. 

The torture reaches a whole new peak when Murali’s father casually asks him to record his private moments with his lover and he nods in complete acceptance. Even the characters on-screen get furious after a point and start voicing what’s on the audience’s mind with dialogues like, “Pullaike broker vela pakuriya?” and “Ne avanku appa va mama va?”

The technical departments of Kasu Mela Kasu offer no respite either. The sudden insertions of random footage from yesteryear films make us wonder if the film is actually the editing exercise of a teenager, but we are still relieved to get some glimpses of more competent films. 

In one exchange between Mayilsamy and Swaminathan, after a long unprovoked laugh of the latter, the former asks, “Naan dhaan eduvume panalaiye, yen siriche?” to which the latter replies, “Apdi dhaan naan summave sirippen.” This film seems to have been made assuming the audience will do the same.