Indian cinema frequently borrows from popular Hollywood movies, but never has the borrowing been more bizarre and less appropriate than in Kutty Pisasu (2010), a Tamil film that brings together the divine retribution of Kali and.. and…
You know what? I can’t. I just can’t. Suffice it to say it’s one of my least favorite American pop-cultural artifacts, and it has no place mixing with Indian mythology… but you’ll have to read about it for yourself. Oh, and there’s also a singing/dancing child star who goes around incinerating people. It’s weird, it’s wild, it’s colorful, and it’s much less fun than you might think.
#1 by lyzard on December 21, 2017 - 7:16 pm
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Wow. Just…wow…
I find I can more easily conceptualise supernatural elements being lifted into the films of this territory, like Mahakaal giving us an Indian Freddy Krueger. Somehow, something as crassly commercial as Transformers seems like a whole new ballpark of WRONG.
Even without the homicidal-five-year-old-revenge-murder plot.
#2 by Ken on December 22, 2017 - 8:11 pm
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So none of the songs were catchy enough that you could double-up on the “B-Notes” roundtable?
#3 by Braineater on December 25, 2017 - 2:52 pm
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No. If I were doing a Tamil film, it would be Chandramukhi.
Lots of Indian DVDs have English subtitles, but even the ones that do rarely bother to sub the songs. That’s a shame. I’d really like to understand what the brother/sister love song was actually about, or what the little girl sings in the theme park after gleefully murdering two men.
EDIT: And the reason I’m not doing Chandramukhi is that first I’d feel compelled to review the original Malayalam movie on which it’s based, Manichitrathazhu… and then the Kannada, Bengali and Hindi remakes, too. I suffer from late-onset Kingsley’s Syndrome.
#4 by ronald on December 25, 2017 - 9:51 am
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“The young girl at the center of the story isn’t a demon ā she’s an agent of divine retribution.”
Well, one religion’s god is another’s demon, so it works out. I guess. š
#5 by ronald on December 25, 2017 - 10:08 am
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On another note:
Eat your heart out, Hit-Girl!
š
#6 by ronald on December 25, 2017 - 12:06 pm
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Another thing (and after this I’ll wait for someone else to talk, I don’t want to monopolize the thread), I’m pretty sure the basic Transformers concept originated, like any number of other SF tropes, in Japan, not in the USA. So there’s that, anyway.
Oddly enough, most of the elements that you seem to find unsuitable about the film are the ones that struck me as unusually cool. Go figure. š
(oh, and…a *telephone* in the 18th century? I mean, obviously YOU didn’t put it in the film, but is that meant to indicate that a noticeable portion of the population of India believes India invented the telephone nearly (or over) a century before Alexander Graham Bell did? Why else would the filmmakers have put it there? Just one more example of how people are alike all over, I suppose…)
#7 by Braineater on December 25, 2017 - 3:05 pm
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You’re right: the Transformers share a common Japanese ancestor with the Micronauts, the robot toys of my generation. But what made the Micronauts so enjoyable, aside from their wonderful design, was the fact that right up until the year they were discontinued they really didn’t have an official back-story. We were free to make up our own.
The Transformers toys and show were a little after my time, so I suppose my opinion of them would’ve changed a bit if they’d been current during my childhood. But what’s being, ahem, “referenced” here is the new series of live-action movies, movies I think exemplify everything that’s crass and contemptible about American (very specifically American) pop-culture film-making.
Finally, whatever residual cool I might have found in the movie after the first viewing completely evaporated once I’d seen all three versions in a row. Then I was just depressed.
#8 by The Rev. on December 26, 2017 - 12:05 am
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The “Transformers” cartoon is one of the few from my youth that didn’t make me completely cringe when I saw it again as an adult. The movie in particular was pretty good…even though Starscream being murdered by that punk-ass Galvatron almost upset me more than Optimus Prime’s demise.
The Marvel comic series, on the other hand, was IMO legit good stuff.
#9 by ronald on December 26, 2017 - 1:54 pm
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Marvel Comics gave the Micronauts a backstory and, since they had a licensing agreement with the toy company, that has the option of being considered official. Mileage varies.
>>>Finally, whatever residual cool I might have found in the movie after the first viewing completely evaporated once Iād seen all three versions in a row.
Well, dude, that’s nobody’s fault but yours. You reached too far (in which direction is subjective) and got burned. š
Your review prompted me to wonder if anyone has ever drawn versions of Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang, Herbie the Love Bug, Christine the killer Plymouth, and other sentient film cars as Transformers. It seems inescapable that someone would have done that by now, but the Google, it does nothing for that search. Shrug.
#10 by Braineater on December 26, 2017 - 3:01 pm
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Marvel’s comics came out just a few months before the toy line was discontinued, at which point it was a little late to establish a canon.
Which, for me, was a good thing, because i went out of my way to avoid collecting action figures that had Somebody Else’s Story attached to them (as far as I knew).