Dhamaka Review

Dhamaka Review: Seat kinda Bomb

Rating: 1.75/5

Mass Maharaja Ravi Teja has come up with his third outing of the season after an unsuccessful Khiladi and Ramarao on Duty. With hit director Trinadh Rao Nakkana and titled Dhamaka, it has hit the screens after a few delays and with a little hype. Let’s see how it turned out.

Plot:

Swami (Ravi Teja) is a basti guy who is looking for a job, while Anand Chakravarti (Ravi Teja) is the son of Nandha Gopal Chakravarti (Sachin Khedhakar), the head of People Mart Co. When JP (Jayaram) plans to take over People Mart Co, how Anand stops him and where his doppelgänger Swami falls into this makes up the rest of the story.

Performances:

Ravi Teja tries. He literally holds the flailing script and infuses it with his sincere performance that sometimes goes over the top but never fails to give the movie some form of energy. And it’s very sad looking at Ravi Teja using all his talents for an outdated and stale script that gives him nothing to work with. Hoping for a better comeback in 2023. Sreeleela’s glamour works for the film when nothing is going its way. Her pairing with Ravi Teja is a little odd, though, and her role is thin and superficial. Jayaram and Sachin Khedakar are used horribly in archetypal roles. Rao Ramesh and Hyper Aadi irritate with their over-the-top antics. Almost everyone overacts no matter what the role given to them- the acting can’t be faulted when the instructions given are such from the director, though.

Ravi Teja tries to turn the clock back with some vintage energy, and his energy is a little helpful to help us connect to the plot

Writing/Direction:

Oh god. Where do I start with the writing? Prasanna Kumar Bezawada’s script is as old as the hills, but that’s never been the problem in previous movies. The core plot is something we’ve seen many times and can be predicted from frame one. However, his strength has always relied on simple emotions written without many complications while setting up entertainment all around him to convey a level of exposition for the world he is setting. Such can be seen in the attitude and the entertainment in Nenu Local, where the family emotions are set in stone and subtly mentioned, the funny set pieces but the overall ego battle in Cinema Choopista Mama, and the comedy of errors with a heart of friendship in Hello Guru Prema Kosame. Dhamaka has none of it. The writing is as empty as a hollow pot and as stale as the hills. None of the scenes have any exposition and just serve to bring about some Jabardasth-level cheap jokes for the masses without properly establishing anything. Leave that alone; everything set is without a proper flow and done so routinely to the point where one can mistake it for a spoof. Killing someone as a villain introduction, beating someone for a hero introduction, beating more people for machismo for a heroine introduction, leading to songs at the snap of a beat. The comedy isn’t funny, the situations aren’t funny either, and the problems that happen for the plot are nonexistent or come and go quickly without any depth inside of the writing itself. At least for the movie to make sense despite the predictable plot there needs to be a level of connect and a level of decently positioned writing, and unfortunately, the film possesses none of that. Arcs are an afterthought to just the poorly written scenes, threads make no sense and lack any connect, and in the end, everything is meshed forward in a poor slurry of events. The writing here is just dated and follows a age old template to a T. It should have belonged 20 years ago with the archetypes it resorts to in its events- making a fool of the villain, a twist villain that is close. Throughout there just isn’t a sense of awareness and focus; it’s just events happening with the least interest and the most lazy writing possible. The writing needed to be sharp with its comedy while still having a decent script, but it has none of that- just poorly written comedic tracks, not an inch of good exposition, and lazy writing that gives such a stale look and invokes plenty of yawns.

The writing and directing duo of Bezawada and Nakkina are usually well set in their entertainment and how well they write comedy, but it doesn’t shine this time and makes the movie hard to sit through

Bezawada’s screenplay is even more appalling, with the film not having a proper structure to bank upon at all. Combined with the poorly written stale scenes, it ends up being a true travesty to sit through and attempt to bring forward a sense of understanding to the movie. The screenplay is either predictable as the ages, with every event thats about to happen able to be seen from plain sight, or disarrayed with a weird slurry of fights and comedy being heaped together. There is never a proper flow of events that takes place nor is there a direction that the script intends to take. The structure is designed to be more natural and free-flowing but ends up being thin and without any support. Songs come in at the blink of an eye, fights are used to prove points (which ends up both being predictable and random in the moment), and when everything fails add some cringe comedy that is used to further the story instead of concrete events and dialogues that help us become invested in the story at hand. Especially in the second half this reaches a peak, with the screenplay quite literally having random dance sequences in the middle enveloped by fights that don’t have anything to say nor are coolly choreographed. If this is a tragedy, the direction and narration by Trinadh Rao Nakkanna is his worst effort and horrible. All of the scenes are executed on a template, as seems to be the tone, but on top of that from a tonality perspective Nakkanna takes an over the top mode with each of his cenes and makes each of his actors ham incessantly with everything that he brings forward to the table. Every scene is presented as it would be about 20 years ago and exagerrated to the next level, resulting in serious cringe moments for us as the audience. Nakkanna’s strength is still exuding entertainment when the writing loses steams with his comedic staging and quick retorts on the spot, but none of that is seen here at all as the narrative falls flat.

The first half of the movie is somehow the better half, but that doesn’t say anything, as it is still a predictable travail of failed entertainment and poor writing. Immediately with the first scene the audience knows exactly which way the movie is going; the next scene can be predicted with ease and every stage is presented in the most stereotypical way it can be. Archetypes are used fully; bring in the villian with a killing, bring in the hero with a fight, bring in the conflict with a speech. Especially the way Ravi Teja enters, with no buildup and just a smoke screen, is the epitome of lazy writing and direction that a commercial movie cannot have, especially one marketed with this much energy. The film progresses here with poor writing and only is furthered by the entry of the heroine, where the comedy and proceedings go entirely downhill. Songs enter here for no reason, the events keep circulating around baseless events and eventually just end up crashing the proceedings. One spoof works out well; the Indra spoof, which has no good writing to support it but ends up being funny at the moment. The movie meanders to a predictable-as-heck interval bang that isn’t choreographed well nor is set up well to any extent with very predictable twists and leaves a lot on the second half. The second half goes into an even further hole with stale scenes and random suspense brought into action that can be predicted in a minute, but leaving that aside the screenplay goes completely off the charts in how messy the movie is. The songs end up interrupting in the middle of nowhere, and while some are picturized decently, they don’t add anything. Fights end up bringing in nothing and are choreographed poorly, and the comedy is exaggerated and unfunny as usual. Eventually, the movie goes to a very poor pre-climax and climax, which turns emotional somehow and is directly lifted from movies like King (2008). It’s clear what Nakkanna wanted to do; present a Vaitla-style movie with spoofs and entertainment in the center of a predictable plot, but he fails horribly.

There’s a dialogue in the movie: “Do your groundwork before success.” Guess the team of Dhamaka didn’t take their own advice with how unprepared and baseless their script was

Technicalities:

Bheems Cecilereo’s music comes in as either speed-breakers, irritating and unnecessary exposition, or relief, depending on the situation. Jinthatha and Mass Raja are the best songs that are picturized somewhat well. However, his BGM is over-exaggerated and too loud all the time and actually takes away from the scene or adds on to the cringe. The cinematography is very jaded and adds on to the stale and generic feel we get from the movie. Dialogues are poor and unfunny, which is very surprising for a Nakkanna movie. Editing cuts down the movie to 137 minutes but fills it with rough cuts and scenes being cut and brought in the middle of nowhere. Production values are decent, with the sets being somewhat well constructed.

Jinthatha is the best of the lot of a very inconsistent album and below-par technicalities.

Overall Verdict/TLDR:

I’ll be honest. I did not expect Dhamaka to miss as badly as it did. Trinadh Rao Nakkina has a knack for making entertaining time pass movies, but boy, has he drastically missed the mark this time. Positives are Ravi Teja’s sincerity, Sreeleela’s energy, some comedy scenes, and 1-2 songs. Negatives are literally everything else; outdated writing, template scenes, a screenplay that is haphazard and messy, speed breaker songs and BGM, jaded cinematography and poor editing, over-exaggerated direction, cringe comedy, poor climax and pre-climax, severely predictable events, the list goes on and on. I expected a firework in theaters but ended up facing fireworks that came and blew up under me. For Ravi Teja’s sincerity and energy, it’s high time he prioritizes scripts like Krack rather than scrap like Khiladi and Dhamaka.

Opinion of Commercial Viability: The general talk seems to be mixed, with the B and C centers being more receptive to the mindless comedy and action presented, but in my opinion it won’t last for long. It might do average to good business in the weekend, but I expect it to be a loss-average grosser at best. The weekend looks promising, so let’s see.