When you walk into a Ravi Teja film or a Trinadha Rao Nakkina directorial, you clearly know what you are signing up for—a true-blue Telugu masala entertainer—and that’s exactly what you get in Dhamaka. Like the title fittingly refers to, there’s an attempt to sensationalise everything here; every tiny action and movement is exemplified in slow-mo with a thumping score from Bheems Ceciroleo, and trust me when I say this, Trinadha Rao embraces the masala and loudness whole-heartedly and approaches even the silliest of the ideas with full conviction.
Dhamaka is yet another testament that this conviction is what separates Telugu filmmakers from others who try their hand at masala. There’s no stopping writer Prasanna Kumar Bezawada and Trinadha Rao when they are aiming to land a punch dialogue or a joke; they charge at it without respite and go full throttle. What could have been one-line gags here are fleshed out into extended sequences. Take, for instance, the scene where Swamy (Ravi Teja, back to what he does best, comedy) learns about the hierarchy of the goons and decides to hit the biggest of them all. You expect the joke to end with dialogues but no, the film spins a whole sequence of action out of it and garnishes it with Ravi Teja’s trademark comic timing. Does it serve a huge purpose to the story? Not really, but it doesn’t annoy you either. In fact, it amuses you at many points. That’s something I can say about Dhamaka as a whole.
The story has a heavy Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo hangover. There’s a rich family, a middle-class family, we are told there are two heirs, there’s an evil corporate villain (Jayaram, playing a cardboard character) who wants to grab the empire that belongs to the rich family, and a swap of sorts happens. You see, the elements are all there and the film does make the most of them for humour and mass action sequences.
Dhamaka entirely exists on the writer’s conviction, and the makers’ attempts to not give the viewer any time to think. The moment you think about the logic of the story or why a character is behaving a certain illogical way, the entire film might come crashing down.
Some doubts about the narrative of Dhamaka are answered before the credits roll, but the reasonings are just not enough. Also, considering how the cold open is resolved, it is almost like the makers just cheated the audience. But, there is no dearth of explosive scenes in Dhamaka! When the big reveal comes during the interval, it works like a charm, and you are once again reminded of the magic of the interval bang. The only ambition Dhamaka harbours is to give these high moments.
Let me tell you about the fun I had with the film. Rao Ramesh is a hoot whenever he appears on the screen. There’s a reenactment of an iconic sequence from a Chiranjeevi film here and Rao Ramesh and Ravi Teja bring the roof down. After looking lost in Khiladi and Ramarao on Duty, Ravi Teja is back in his element, and with the film shaped around him and his strengths, it did feel good watching him do comedy that works. But it really is hard to overlook the age gap between him and his co-star Sreeleela, who plays Pranavi.
And there’s a distasteful husband-wife joke that was more concerning than funny. Yes, I know it’s a masala film but perhaps it is not too much to ask filmmakers to be a little more cautious about what they think is funny.Dhamaka, in all, delivers what it promised. It is a self-aware entertainer that doesn’t want to do anything more than entertain the audience. It feels engineered to cater to the masses, but that’s fine because it largely succeeds in doing what it set out to do.