Shaakuntalam Trailer - Samantha looks stunning in a trailer that feels like a cross between Adipurush and a 90s TV serial

The epic story of Shakuntala has been told and retold multiple times, in the form of books, tv shows, and movies.

This latest adaptation by director Gunasekhar, starring Samantha in the lead finally dropped its first trailer, and other than an earnest performance by the actress everything less is a letdown.

The trailer which is just under three minutes long gives us a quick overview of the tale of Shakuntala from her childhood in the forest, her fated meeting with King Dushyanta, and her eventual exile.

The biggest issue with the trailer is how artificial it feels, while it is clear that the makers behind the movie were going for a more magical and surreal visual approach, something akin to Ridley Scott's 1985 movie Legend.

Especially with the forest sequences featuring the two star-crossed lovers, it instead comes off feeling like one of those late 90s and early 2000s mythological shows, we saw on Star Plus or Sony.

The second issue is the unimpressive CGI on display, which feels very outdated but nowhere near as bad as the Adipurush teaser, which isn't exactly a compliment.

In an interview, the director said that it took them 10 months to work on the CGI but looking at the quality on display, it clearly doesn't feel like it, and considering that movie will be released next month, the final result won't be much better.

Now what works for the trailer is the performance by Samantha and is clear that she will be doing most of the heavy lifting in the movie as most of the other performances feel hammy.

The chemistry between the two leads looks promising, Dev Mohan is giving a good performance as Dushyanta but the poor quality of the ADR ends up hurting his performance.

The rest of the cast includes Mohan Babu, Aditi Balan, Ananya Nagalla, Prakash Raj, Kabir Duhan Singh, and Madhoo.

Maybe the movie could end up being far superior to the trailer and this turns out to be one of the cases of a good movie having a bad trailer.

Shaakuntalam will be hitting the big screen on 17 February 2023.