Hakuna Matata Chapter 2 review: At the end of eight episodes, this murder mystery leaves a lot unanswered

1.5/5

Story: Special Investigation Bureau officer Vijay’s (Vijay Raghavendra) investigation into the investigation of a quickly-wrapped up murder case, which resulted in the alleged perpetrator, Amrutha (Chandana Ananthakrishna), getting a life sentence, takes a lot of unexpected twists and turns. Can Vijay piece it all together?

Review: In the first five episodes of Hakuna Matata Chapter 1, we were introduced to the circumstances surrounding how Amrutha was sentenced and sent to jail for murdering her husband. Her family, though, believes she is innocent and had enlisted suspended Special Investigation Bureau officer Vijay’s help to see if there were faults in the earlier investigation. By the end of Chapter 1, we knew the where, when and what of the crime. The why was still based on circumstantial evidence, but the who remained a big question mark. And guess what, Chapter 2 doesn’t answer that either.

The last three episodes of director Kishoor Moodbidri’s crime thriller were released earlier this week and those who were hopping to see the investigation neatly tied up are in for some major disappointment. In Chapter 2, the prime suspect turns out to be one of Amrutha’s former friends, Gowtham (Vijay Krishna), a film director, who, incidentally, is also close to Vijay’s fellow investigating officer, Roopa (Ranjani Raghavan).

Gowtham has apparently been working on a script for an upcoming murder mystery, for which he’d been seeking Roopa’s help to ‘iron out’ all the legal and procedural loopholes. Strangely enough, Roopa doesn’t reveal her connect with Gowtham to Vijay at first and when she is caught red-handed doesn’t immediately catch on to how eerily similar his script is to their ongoing investigation. Ranjani’s character is really let down with the writing of the second half of this show. But then no one else benefitted either.

After literally proceeding at snail’s pace over seven episodes, it is in the last 10 minutes of episode eight that Kishoor presents some bizarre twists that are meant to intrigue audiences enough to warrant another season. That’s going to be highly unlikely, am guessing. Talkies App, on which the show is streaming, shows how many views this mystery has got so far and they haven’t even clocked 500 yet. Not a very encouraging number.

Even though Hakuna Matata has known names like Vijay, Ranjani, Chandana and Yamuna Srinidhi, among others, on board, they are at the mercy of a poorly-written script and worse still, severely limited production values. For a streaming platform that has made baby steps into Kannada content, it is disheartening to see low-cost ventures being put together and then hoping that audiences will take a shine to them. Short films, these days, are made on much better scales than what you get to see in Hakuna Matata.

Verdict: At the end of Chapter 1, I was hopeful that Kishoor would tie up the mystery neatly with the remaining episodes, but alas, that was not to be. The ‘To be Continued’ at the end was uncalled for. Instead of stretching out a wafer-thin plot, Kishoor should have just focused on how to tell an effective, well-rounded story within the limitations he was presented with. This was an utterly wasted opportunity. One really wonders why actors like Vijay, Ranjani, etc., chose to be a part of this. Beats me!