Debutant Gajesh’s Film Ends up Being a Wasted Effort

Debutant Gajesh’s Film Ends up Being a Wasted Effort

Film: Kalkandu

Director: A.M. Nandakumar

Cast: Gajesh, Akhil, Dimple Chopade, Kanja karuppu

The film marks the debut of Gajesh, son of actor Anand Babu and grandson of legendary actor Nagesh. A romcom, it features the debutant in a role where he gets to play a carefree youngster in the first part of the film and the narration takes a more serious turn towards the end. With a pleasant screen presence, Gajesh for a debut actor is assured and confident. However he could have selected a better launch vehicle.

The plot opens with Karthik (Gajesh) and his elder brother Vignesh (‘Kalluri’ Akhil). Their father  who is a school master and a strict disciplinarian, wants his sons to be doctors. Vignesh fulfills his father’s ambition and gets a job in the US, while Karthik has to go through a whole rigamarole of misunderstandings and unfortunate events, to finally prove his worth. The screenplay is insipid, the narration lack-lustre. The characters and the moments are weakly etched, neither interesting nor believable. The whole episode of Karthik getting admission in a medical college and then losing it due to a technical error is quite half-baked.

Scenes that follow, like his attempt to get his seat back; his falling for medical student Karthika (Dimple of Yaaruda Mahesh); his hanging around the college for the rest of the course misleading his family, totally lacks conviction. The narrative style is more like that of a TV serial. In the second half, the screenplay takes a nosedive, never to recover. Akhil disappears after the initial scenes, only to return towards the end, where he becomes the predictable third angle in a contrived episode. The antics of the friends who are constantly around Karthik (Kanja Karuppu and gang), makes one wonder why the director surrounded his hero with such an assorted, unlikely and annoying bunch of buddies. With nothing positive going for it, Kalkandu is a wasted effort.

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