Gunasekhar, the director of Shakunthalam, is no stranger to failure. He has a track record of making disastrous movies with big heroes, including Sainikudu, Varudu, Mrigaraju, and Nippu.
Unfortunately, Shakunthalam is no exception to this pattern.
Although it may not be entirely Gunasekhar's fault that the movie did not receive a proper opening on its first day, it began to slide downhill and reached a disaster level the very next day.
No one can be blamed here except Gunasekhar, who is the sole captain of the movie.
Although Dil Raju provided financial resources to an extent and did not stop the budget from escalating to 63 crores from the original 40 crores, Gunasekhar failed in his mission.
Gunasekhar's first mistake was the script itself.
A subject as delicate as Shakuntalam has many emotional aspects, which he failed to bring to the screen. Gunasekhar's focus on VFX sets and visualization led him to neglect the script, relying on modern technology to work its magic.
He claimed to be showcasing the aspect of self-love, rather than Shakuntala's beauty, but failed to design the original Shakuntala character correctly.
In the climax, where the husband comes to Shakuntala, there is no self-respect shown except for running and closing the door, which is a letdown.
In the climax, half of the effort spent on writing overdosed dialogues for Allu Arha should have been focused on Shakuntala's emotional track.
Burra Sai Madhav's lack of skill in writing comedy is evident once again in Shivabalaji's character, which is boring to the core.
Coming to the 3D effect, even in a single scene, the synchronization between the background and characters was insufficient. The poor 3D made the characters look like dwarfs or giants, wasting ten crores.
Songs for such movies should be fantastic, and Gunasekhar's movies have always had good songs. However, they are also missing in this movie. The background score by Mani Sharma is also being criticized.
Shakunthalam aimed to earn over 20 crores from theaters by its release, but the movie's chances of achieving even a quarter of that are doubtful.
