Watching the Telugu movie Bhola Shankar, headlined by Chiranjeevi and directed by Meher Ramesh, is like going back in time by a few decades but not in a good way. The film repackages outdated, formulaic tropes and presents them with the confidence that star presence — Chiranjeevi, Tamannaah Bhatia and Keerthy Suresh — is enough to salvage a listless narrative. Meher Ramesh, credited with ‘story development’, adapts an eight-year-old Tamil film Vedalam starring Ajith, which was no great shakes either. What unravels is a cocktail of a sappy brother-sister bond, cardboard-ish villain characters, a leading lady who is supposed to contribute to absurd fun and comes across as utterly silly, a lot of tasteless humour and loud, forgetful music.
Bhola Shankar is set in Kolkata. The city is immaterial, because, apart from a smattering of Bengali, visuals of the Hooghly bridge and Durga puja festivities, plenty of scenes have evidently been filmed on sets. Shankar (Chiranjeevi) arrives in the city with his sister Mahalakshmi (Keerthy Suresh), whom he enrolls in a fine arts stream. Later in the film, I think, there is a mention of her studying architecture in her graduation. Never mind. We aren’t supposed to remember and question such things. Her character goes through memory loss, so maybe we should also let it be. Meanwhile, the narrative is busy with its nods to the other famous Shankar enacted by Chiranjeevi — Shankardada.
Bhola Shankar (Telugu)
Shankar takes up a job as a taxi driver in a company run by Vamsi (Vennela Kishore), whose colourful characterisation and the equation he shares with his wife and father-in-law (Pradeep) paves the way for some campy fun. An incident that occurs in the opening segment followed by a character’s assertion about the arrival of a monster-like saviour makes it more than evident that Shankar’s innocent act as an ordinary man is a farce. It doesn’t take long before the narrative progresses into a revenge drama mode, giving ample scope for Chiranjeevi to take on any number of baddies with maniacal glee.
The bond between Shankar and Mahalakshmi is saccharine sweet and the narrative brings in an equally good-hearted Srikar (Sushanth) into the mix, apart from Lasya (Tamannaah Bhatia) as a silly criminal lawyer, accompanied by her juniors (Viva Harsha and Hyper Aadhi). There’s also Brahmanandam in a cameo, Murali Sharma and Tulasi later in the tale, Sreemukhi, Rashmi Gautam and a whole lot of comedy actors, from Venu Yeldandi to Satya, but none of them make a mark. They have to be content with merely being present in a ‘Boss’ movie.
The Boss himself does not have anything fresh to chew on. There are plenty of references to his older films such as Annaya and Aapadbandhavudu. There are also ample references to Pawan Kalyan’s Kushi and Ram Charan’s Rangasthalam. All this nostalgia, rather than contributing to the starry aura, only falls flat in the absence of a narrative that evokes empathy. The story deals with trafficking, a principal character is in danger and yet, it does not evoke an emotional connection.
Shankar’s characterisation also remains at the surface level. In the original, Ajith is shown as a shrewd thug who would do anything for money and his change of heart does not happen easily. But Shankar’s character, pandering to the larger-than-life superstardom of Chiranjeevi, holds back from going all out to show him as morally skewed. Hence, his change of heart also does not make an impact.
Once the film lays bare its revenge motives, all that is left is the confrontation. Shankar’s run-ins with Shawar Ali, Tarun Arora and others who are cast as caricaturish villains are marked by unimaginative action set pieces, punctuated with forgetful songs.
The 160-minute film is an ordeal to sit through. We have seen far better work from Chiranjeevi and Keerthy Suresh. To an extent, it is Tamannaah who seems to have had fun playing an outlandish character.
It is high time Chiranjeevi acts in new, contemporary narratives and embraces his age. The actor-star with an enviable body of work needs a reinvention and even the fan service can do with fresh ideas.
Bhola Shankar is currently running in theatres
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