Dhamaka Review - Story
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.
Dhamaka Review - Analysis
The first thing that you notice with Dhamaka the moment the first scene flies on is that every scene seems to be lifted from an earlier movie or fashions itself exactly like it. Not one element is fresh or presented in a new manner. No one was expecting a fresh plot, but the strength of Trinadh Rao Nakkana’s previous movies such as Nenu Local or Hello Guru Prema Kosame was a entertainment filled ride with a core emotion that was set up and tied neatly to make the audience overlook how routine it was. That is sorely missing here and makes Dhamaka hard to sit through.
Dhamaka’s core plot is as old as the hills. Writer Prasanna Kumar Bezawada follows a template and keeps it to the template for the most of the movie without developing any of the plot with the proper exposition needed to invest the audience. The punches fall flat, the comedy is set up very crudely and doesn’t pay off. Rather than putting an emphasis on a coherent script with proper development of threads and emotions, the entire movie goes for a toss from frame one with the way everything ends up being established. It is the epitome of lazy writing and taking the audience for granted.
The screenplay is even more horrendous. There isn’t a proper flow to the events, and complementing that with the already hard to sit through writing, ends up being pure torture for the audience from scene one. Fights come in randomly followed by the most abrupt placement of songs, followed by more fights and more songs. Where’s the time taken to establish the story? All of the blocks are archetypically set up and hastily brought it before being choppily brought to an end. The first half follows an outdated template with the screenplay before the second half flies off the rails with random dance sequences, fights, and emotional dialogues being wrapped up in a flurry with no sense of structure.
Nakkana’s direction and narration is stale and formulaic, but the tone he takes on with the proceedings is over the top and exaggerated. Everything is narrated with a sense of exaggeration and results in all of the events being very cringe when they are presented. Not to mention that the events are executed predictably and on a formulaic template as they would about 10 years ago, resulting in a travesty of an output being presented with no sense of direction at any point.
The comedy especially needs to be talked about; it is very bad to the point of no return. Everything is made exaggerated with sounds to indicate if something is funny and punches poking fun at a bunch of things that are just not funny anymore. It’s high time Nakkana improve his style, as like before everything seemed to be straight dependent on the comedy and didn’t work at all.
Ravi Teja tries to carry the movie but theres a sense of over-the-top to his performance too. His sincerity carries some portions of the movie to an extent. Sreeleela has no role but tries her best and her glamour works in favor too. The rest of the actors have been instructed to over play their roles and hamper the proceedings very much.
The cinematography and production values are a bit low for sure; many shots are jaded without a sense of soul to the proceedings and add on to the generic feeling we get. Music by Bheems Cecilero gives a break and some songs are good but some songs come in at the wrong times unneedly. The BGM of the movie is over-the-top and either too loud or just unnecessary. Dialogues are poor. Editing is rough and despite a small runtime filled with rough cuts.
Dhamaka Review - Verdict
Overall, Dhaka turns to be a pain to sit through. Positives are Ravi Teja and Sreeleela’s glamour, along with two songs and 1-2 comedy scenes. Negatives are everything else. Quite literally everything else. Ravi Teja is still an actor with a lot of potential, but outdated and stale scripts like this are not going to do him any good.