If Balakrishna had brought back the boring ‘sister sentiment’ trope in his last film Veera Simha Reddy, it is Chiranjeevi’s turn to exploit the cliche in Bholaa Shankar. Directed by Meher Ramesh, Bholaa Shankar stars Chiranjeevi, Tamannaah, and Keerthy Suresh in the lead roles. Ramesh, notwithstanding his dismal record, is back to directing a film after a long gap of 10 years.
Bholaa Shankar is the remake of the 2015 Tamil film Vedalam, which starred Ajith. Expectations for the film plunged after it was revealed that it is a remake of Vedalam. I mean, why would people be interested in a remake when the original version itself was poor.
Chiranjeevi plays the title role. He works as a taxi driver in Kolkata. Similar to the auto driver character played by Rajini in Baashha, Bholaa Shankar too is kind and gentle, and loves his sister Mahalakshmi (Keerthy Suresh). In typical ‘sister sentiment’ drama, Mahalakshmi runs into trouble and ‘Annaya’ Chiranjeevi rushes to save the day. This is the story brief of Bholaa Shankar.
The film fails largely because it does not have an emotional core. Though the story is about the bond between a brother and sister, there are not enough moving scenes that make you root for Bholaa Shankar or Mahalakshmi. There is no soul to the film. What we get is a series of events stitched together and peppered with terrible jokes. The film never really takes off. The supposed twists, which are meant to excite the audience and make us interested in the film, remain a dud because of the poor writing. Simply put, there is not one moment in the film that either satisfies Chiranjeevi fans or the regular audience.
Chiranjeevi tries his best to salvage the film with his comedic skills, but the poor writing diminishes his performance. Tamannaah delivers one of her worst performances to date. Only Keerthy manages to scrape through without any damage.
While this Telugu remake has come eight years after Vedalam, it has no improvements to keep up with the current audience. As outdated as the story is, Meher Ramesh’s direction is equally obsolete.
The ‘artificiality’ – clearly visible in the fact that most of the scenes were either shot indoors or in poorly-designed sets – really disappointed me. Even the choreography of scenes are bland, with dialogues painfully reiterating a self-explanatory scene. For instance: a villain is trying to locate Bholaa Shankar using his phone signal from a war room that has too many computers displaying random details. Yet a tech person takes the pain to explain how hacking works.
From the story narration, music, performances, to Chiranjeevi’s star power, nothing works in this shoddily made film.
The film has many offensive stereotypes too, such as a ruffian speaks only in the Telangana dialect as opposed to an innocent person; similarly, when a family is shown to be peace-loving, their caste location is shown as Brahmin. It is as if Ramesh got stuck in the year 2000 and did not witness the changes in cinema.
There are also some gaping holes in the film. Ramesh introduces the villains and the criminals to the audience in different camera angles, and when the police are investigating a human trafficking racket, the same footage is used for the investigating officers. This defies all logic. How lazy must a filmmaker be to not put in any effort into showing a different video and suggest that some undercover policeman shot it?
In another scene leading to a big revelation, Laasya (Tamannaah) comes to a location that she is not supposed to. When the mysterious Shankar had preplanned a crime, why would he share the live location with her? It felt like Ramesh had run out of ideas to proceed further.
Bholaa Shankar would probably remain one of the few remakes that made an already terrible film look better.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the producers or any other members of its cast and crew.