There are times when you really don’t want to rip a movie in your review. Take ‘Jai Vigneshwar,’ for example. It’s an experiment in animation (this is the first time Flash is being used for a full-length theatrical feature), i t’s unobjectionable entertainment for kids and it’s about the childhood exploits of Lord Ganesha. You want to be kind. Really. It’s just that the filmmakers make it so hard.

You can forgive the fact that the animation is jerky and minimal (the figures move like those paper puppets that just shake their heads, arms and legs to and fro). After all, it’s a first-time effort. You can even over-look the fact that facial expressions are slow to dawn and are often unintentionally funny. What makes you wonder whether to laugh or cry is the English language dialogue. Picture this: young Lord Ganesha and his brother Lord Muruga are fighting, and Lord Shiva (in complete heavenly get-up) rolls his eyes and says, “Will you stop, kiddoes?” (This, in an oddly slow, monotonous way that makes him sound like he’s been dubbed by one of those computer text-to-speech softwares. For whatever reason, all the characters sound like that).

Or picture Narada arriving in a little child’s room, piously saying “Narayana Narayana” and then following that up with, “Well sweetheart, I am Narad,” in a self-conscious American accent (Ved Vyasa, on the other hand, sounds like an English butler circa 1912).

In flashback
And then there’s the story or lack of it. The entire film is essentially a flashback of Vigneshwara’s childhood, in the form of stories Narada narrates to the child.

These are familiar tales – of how Ganesha got his elephant head, how he got a mouse as his vahanam (“Dad, mom, look at my mooshik, isn’t he cute?!”) and so on. They do have the potential to be heart-warming, but unfortunately, they’re bogged down by narration as bad as the dialogue, poor characterisation and virtually no dramatic impetus (they read like a series of disjointed vignettes).

Perhaps this film will show to better advantage in Tamil or Hindi (regional language versions are in the works). Perhaps. That’s about as kind as I can get about ‘Jai Vigneshwar.’