Kumki 2 Movie Review: Bizarre concoction of melodrama, randomness, and poor choices

Kumki 2 Movie Review:

Prabu Solomon's Kumki 2 starts nice and slow. The story begins with a young boy named Bhumi, who grows up with an abusive mother with a criminal record and a negligent step-father. At last, a ray of hope enters his life when he accidentally befriends an elephant calf named Nila, and they grow up together. Kumki 2 tries to replicate the charm of old-school children's stories, but it never shies away from the staggering depth of its own darkness. Prabu Solomon waxes poetic about the bond between humans and nature, but we also get a good look at how irredeemably toxic Bhumi’s parents are. The film might get melodramatic, but there is a focused intent to make characters feel real and grounded. And then the film takes a time jump. The boy grows up. The elephant grows up. The story, however, moves back in time to the 80s when elephants named Ramu and snakes named Babu danced to songs, fought goons, and shed tears when their human friends got sad. Except, Kumki 2 is a “serious” film about “serious” themes, and so it is not as charming or fun.

Director: Prabu Solomon
Cast: Mathi, Shrrita Rao, Arjun Das, others

The film is a collection of several unintentionally hilarious sequences. The long montage of Bhumi ‘mourning’ the disappearance of Nila, stretching from his early days in college to his graduation day, is definitely hilarious when you think about how Bhumi is just seen sulking for years. Of course, that is not what the story intends. He probably had a fun time hanging out with classmates and had to actually study (sometimes). But the montage is designed in a way that makes you feel like all the poor guy does is to make sad faces and not interact with anyone. The “Five years later” card, followed by Bhumi holding the same reaction, is the cherry on top of the montage's ridiculousness. This is all hilarious in retrospect, but harrowing to go through. Salt on the wound is Nivas K Prasanna’s incessant attempts to fill every montage with a song. Sometimes, he just plays it over a dialogue, but that might be him trying to save the audience.

On paper, Kumki 2 is an adventure about a human and his long-lost elephant friend trying to reunite while powerful forces are trying to rip them apart. It probably should have stayed on paper, considering how a simple and interesting premise is stretched to include ‘political conspiracy’, ‘ritual animal sacrifice’, ‘policemen with personal vengeance towards the elephant’, ‘action hero-like fight sequences for the elephant’, and a ‘protagonist who does nothing but cry and moan all the time’. While the film suffers from foundational problems, the supposed attempts to add ‘mainstream appeal’ through comedy do not work either. In fact, the supporting characters and their attempts at humour are some of the worst stretches of the film. Bad jokes are not the issue. It's when you realise that the dialogues don’t make sense and that they expect you to laugh just because these lines are delivered in the ‘tone’, ‘attitude’, and ‘body language’ we are all familiar with Tamil comedians. It’s like when someone is trying to mimic a song from a language they don’t know.

Kumki 2 is a collection of unintentionally hilarious sequences and several bizarre and random creative choices, but the worst part is the first twenty minutes, because it makes you feel like this could all turn out to be a competent film, so you stay and give it a shot, hoping it gets better, but it only gets worse by the minute.