Bhola Shankar review: This routine sibling sentiment drama fails to impress the real audience

“How extravagant a fan service can get?” is the debate that you usually hear watching the films of Telugu star heroes.

Bhola Shankar is the much-awaited project of Megastar Chiranjeevi and it is as shallow as his appearance on the screen.

Well, it’s not the numbers that run at the box office but how many corpses the actor pulls down!

Story

Bhola Shankar (Chiranjeevi), a street dada-cum-taxi driver from Hyderabad, lands in Kolkata along with his sister Maha Lakshmi (Keerthy Suresh). Missing cases of teenage girls, as many as 60 in number, wreak havoc in the city.

The kingpin, Alexander (Tarun Arora), who is behind the human trafficking, gets a major jolt from taxi driver Bhola.

As things flare up in the course, Bhola finds himself in the middle of the story. What is the connection Alex has with Bhola forms the crux of the story.

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Megastar gets wasted

Sometimes you can’t help but curse the filmmakers for their poor knowledge of issues dealing with crime and law and order.

In the first half, young women go missing in Kolkata. In fact, they get abducted by the notorious gang led by Alex.

But surprisingly, Kolkata city has no CC cameras! The city police, led by city Commissioner Sayaji Shinde, urge taxi drivers to get information and they eventually get a tip-off from cabbie Bhola Shankar.

There’s Howrah Bridge, Victoria Memorial Garden, of course, Eden Gardens that appear in the movie, but no characters in Bhola Shankar speak Bengali. All the characters are tailormade.

The story neither tracks down the images of the past — like that in Megastar’s most cherished film Choodalani Vundi (1998) — nor makes the audiences slip into the mood of Kolkata.

Chiranjeevi looks “Teluguly” not just for Bamsi (Vennela Kishore), who offers the cabbie job in Kolkata, but also for everyone watching the film.

The grace and Chiru’s onscreen charm are just wasted in the dance numbers and the pointless high-octane fights.

A disappointment for fans

The deplorable part is enacting the famous sequence from Powerstar Pawan Kalyan’s Kushi (2001). Memes on the same might have already been doing rounds on social media by now.

Chiranjeevi is nauseating and upsettingly emotional.

By the time Bhola discovers the gang behind woman trafficking, you sit wondering why there’s no interval yet.

And the whole second half is about his past. How many times would filmmakers play the same game, impressing, and coaxing the Mega fans with such stories?

There’s a scene where Keerthy brings the profusely bleeding Bhola Shankar to a hospital. And the staff tells her: “You should lodge a complaint with the police first. Only then the patient will be treated.”

Which era are you living in dude? Is this film a period drama?

This isn’t the only one. Bhola Shankar is riddled with outdated dialogues and partly cringy stuff, too.

The comedy in the film needs more dose of humour.

Director Meher Ramesh evidently fails to pull off the story well. The story falls way short compared to Chiranjeevi’s previous outing Waltair Veerayya (2023).

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Keerthy Suresh scores over Chiranjeevi

Lauding Chiranjeevi’s performance in Bhola Shankar would further belittle him. His character lacks depth.

By trying films with routine dance numbers and elevation scenes, he might set the cash registers ringing, but stories like these would nowhere make him closer to people.

Keerthy Suresh’s performance amplified the emotional scenes. She does the best she could do in the sister’s role.

Tamannaah Bhatia as criminal lawyer Lasya is entertaining in parts. But she doesn’t actually play the love interest of Bhola.

It looks as if the connection isn’t built properly, barring a few comedy scenes in the court.

Apart from the dance numbers, director Meher Ramesh couldn’t figure out the reason why the Megastar lost sync with Tamannaah.

Interestingly, Raja Ravindra does the routine stuff as his character lacks bite. He happens to be an Indian Navy officer and interestingly, he helps the kingpin Alex to make his business flourish.

There are a whole bunch of Jabardasth actors in the film.

Get-up Srinu fails to pack a punch the way he usually does on the small screen. He switches from Telangana dialect to Andhra so blindly.

Bitthiri Satti has literally no work to do!

Sreemukhi’s role is entertaining in the second half. She draws a few whistles from the crowds in the second half.

Small-screen anchor Rashmi Gautam appears in a cameo role in a dance number.

Swara Sagar’s music is partly good. Except for the song “Jam Jam Jajjanaka“, nothing really is worth foot-tapping.

Verdict

This brother-sister sentiment is a routinely-packed story aimed at entertaining Chiranjeevi’s fans rather than winning real audiences.

(Views expressed here are personal.)

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