Mahasenha Volume – 1 Movie Review: A jumbo-sized mess

Mahasenha Volume – 1 Movie Review:

The credits for Kantara’s success cannot be solely attributed to its technical grandeur. The technical aspects don’t even claim the major share of it. The efforts to disseminate the culture of Tulunadu are evident in the way the story is worked around the kshetrapalas. Movies that try to emulate it should make a proper assessment and not just marvel at how things were staged. The staging cannot look pleasing without a strong story. However, Dinesh Kalaiselvan’s Mahasenha Volume – 1 — decides to do away with the hardest, the most essential part of establishing an arresting lore, something in abundance in Tamil Nadu.  

The film has a leaky plot with large chunks of inconsequential sequences. A scene should be a story of its own and lend itself to the larger narrative. The incoherence in the transition between scenes is so jarring that you would start wondering if you are even watching a completed movie. The writer jumps from one story to another whenever he feels bored, and finally decides to stitch all the incoherent stories together. Tada!! We have Mahasenha! 

Remaining silent about the plot details is fine till the release, but how do you not reveal it in the film, too?. As the film begins with the people of Kurangani repelling the evil tribe members in their bid to spirit away their deity Yaazheeswaran, let's assume that it is the main plot. Senguttuvan (Vemal), during a scene, says that the deity defended itself multiple times over the years when evildoers attempted to take it away. Then why waste time in a chase? Maybe that's what Senguttuvan also thought. He then shifts his attention to conducting the thiruvizha until the tribe decides to wait like us, waiting for a single engaging moment. If you thought the thiruvizha was the plot... Think again. Senguttuvan is now on the lookout for his elephant, Sena, which goes into musth and runs away into the wilderness. Senguttuvan disappears from the screenplay in pursuit of his tusker. There are a few more pursuits in the movie, but nothing outlasts ours.

Director: Dinesh Kalaiselvan

Cast: Vemal, Srushti Dange, Yogi Babu, Kabir Duhan Singh

Oh, and you have a bunch of STEM students being taken on a trek to appreciate nature better. Professor Kamaraj (Dr Alfred Jose) convinces the dean to implement his trekking idea, saying that the students can educate themselves by visiting Kurangani, take part in their festival, and worship the miraculous Yaazheeswaran. What is the education he is talking about here exactly? No idea. Or maybe to educate themselves on how not to write a movie. As a unique identifier, the people of Kurangani wear an amulet. Somehow, inorganically, these students, too, are drawn into the who-gets-to-have-the-idol contest. Pretty much like how the film tempts us into believing it has an interesting story to tell, there are multiple zooms of a student wearing this amulet. Does he offer anything substantial to the proceedings? When Senguttuvan even remembers there is a plot surrounding the thiruvizha, we reach the pre-climactic portions. So, who'd care about the secret of this student?

Then there is this corrupt forest official, Prathap (John Vijay), with his ulterior motives. The metrics to measure his importance in the movie are just the number of slow-motion shots he gets, and not the screentime or scope to perform. He joins the huge list of forgettable performances in the movie, but manages to question even the flimsy premise of two clans hamming it out against each other. We never know why the deity's idol is important to any of the parties involved. Yogi Babu's 'Suruli illama naa enna Idhayam Murali ya?' and similar lines land as a stabbing on an already dead person. Srusti Dange's Bommi either cries or is on the verge of tearing up, and does nothing else.

Mahasenha Volume – 1, in a nutshell, is yet another notorious film in the list of several other 'Chapter 1' and 'Part 1' movies that employ this tagline in vain, only to cop out from providing a story worth our time, and dares to assume that we would bother about a second part.