Dashavatar

Dashavatar (2008) opens with two adorable animated moppets, Ajay and Aarti, fleeing from the gangsters who’ve kidnapped them. The kids run into an abandoned temple, where Aarti sees a statue of Krishna, and prays for help. Which she gets! But since the children don’t directly see Vishnu’s miraculous intervention, Ajay doesn’t believe it. And then the children meet a priest (Shreyas Talpade), who teaches them a mantra which transports them to the planet Pandora, where the children witness the struggle between human colonists and the native Na’Vi.

Wait. Sorry. Wrong Avatar. The priest, who turns out to be the sage Narad in disguise, teaches the children a mantra which transports them to Heaven, where they witness the ten incarnations of Vishnu.

And that is basically the movie. It’s essentially a religious primer, more or less faithfully retelling ten familiar stories. Some of the retellings are quite clever; the film manages to depict most of the Ramayana within the space of a single song, for instance. On the other hand, the film is explicitly aimed at children, and so some uncomfortable details are ignored. The Ramayana retelling ends with Ram having rescued Sita and the happy couple flying off into the sunset together.

Dashavatar is practically review proof; it’s one of those movies which does precisely what it says on the tin.