Movie Review | Ravi Teja\'s \'Dhamaka\' is the least explosive

There was a point in time for Tollywood when Ravi Teja ruled. He had a quirky space of his own. Having worked in a niche space, he found comfort and nothing can be more dangerous than a comfort zone for a creative artist. This is true for Ravi Teja, yet again, who, anyway, has been in search of an elusive hit for a while now.

Among the issues is an obnoxious understanding of what the audience wants or what can pass off as entertainment. While filmmakers elsewhere are making serious attempts to build on fresh stances, capture delicate premises to tell of human behaviour and craft tales around it, Tollywood, unfortunately, is still in Rip Van Winkle mode.

Why else would a filmmaker, in the dying moments of 2022, think of telling a story of a child, lost in a mela, and his lookalike growing up in different scenarios of poverty and affluence?

Nanda Gopal (Sachin Kadrekar) is the head of a big business house that wants to share the moolah with all the employees and so does his son Anand Chakravarthy (Ravi Teja). Lookalike Swamy grows up in a middle-class family, with his father (played by Tanikella Barani) and mother (played by Tulasi), and turns out a goon of sorts, who, in typical Ravi Teja style, can beat up the baddies. He is in love with his latest Pavani (played by Sree Leela).

The families and villains join the party to set the good versus bad story in full bloom. Villains beat up the hero as the movie begins, with the tale of how and why it happened. To add a seemingly new angle to the tale is that Pavani is unable to make up her mind whether she must accept Swamy or Anand’s proposal. Heart over mind or mind over heart is her romantic dilemma. A first-world problem of sorts.

Jayaram (JP) is the main villain, who is engaged in a violent corporate war of takeovers and believes that shooting business heads is as easy as hiring them, adding to the high dose of meaningless violence. Good is going to win sooner than later and so you wait and yawn for the inevitable. Add to the wait the needless song and dance numbers that just jam the narrative needlessly. There are also the usual heroics and the sexist comments about the heroine that muster acceptance even today in Tollywood. Even the angle of shooting the walk of the hero is so predictable that you know exactly what could be happening around the corner.

Rao Ramesh, as the heroine’s father, and Hyper Aadi as his driver add some humour to the film. Surely, one can only search in vain for anything else to put a positive spin on the film, but not the lead pair.

This blast is a damp squib.