The Telugu audiences have had this very rare liking for dubbed films. There have been times that dubbed films (mostly from Tamil) have fared better than our local releases. No wonder Tamil stars like Rajinikanth, Suriya and Kamal Haasan enjoy a huge following in the Telugu speaking states, so much so, their films’ dubbing rights are sold at exorbitant prices. The latest example of this would be Kabali, sold at a price of Rs 30 crore in the Telugu speaking states.

But guess what, despite so much money riding on the back of these films, it seems like the buyers here aren’t really bothered about the end quality of the product. Case in question would be Kabali. While the film’s story, screenplay and performances are an altogether different thing here, the biggest flaw of the movie was the wrong dubbing choices.

While the makers did go for voices that suited the prime cast of the film, it was the rest of the cast that turned out to be a disappointment. Over the years, the process of dubbing in these films has been a very vital element considering that is the only element which can bring a native touch to the film which, despite having our favourite stars, fails to bring in a local flavour.

But Kabali was a perfect example of what shouldn’t be done when selecting voices for a dubbing film, especially when such huge money is riding on it. If there were 10 reasons to complain, the voices which didn’t match the characters were another woe for the audiences whose experience it dampened.

But hold on, the problems don’t end there…

The efforts that are put into getting the rights of the film, if even 10% of that is put into a proper dialogue writing team, it would be a huge value addition for the film as viewers would laugh only when necessary! And not because a serious dialogue looks funny.

Kabali is a gangster movie and the dialogues don’t really sync with present times and make you feel like you are watching the dubbed films of the 90s where the language isn’t updated.

It’s not like there haven’t been films which are good in terms of this output. But it kind of hurts when a huge film, with so much hype fails to meet the most basic expectations.