Dwaraka - Movie Review

What’s it about!
Gurumurthy (Prudhvi), a spiritual guru, tells one of his followers that a god man would appear all of a sudden to remove all his problems. Erra Seenu (Vijay Devarakonda), small-time thief, decides to steal an idol to put an end to his life as thief. In the middle-of-the act of his robbery, he sees Vasudha (Pooja Jhaveri) and his heart-beat skips for her. Meanwhile, people are after him. To escape from them he hides in an apartment where Gurumurthy's follower resides. With Erra Seenu's arrival, this followers trouble go away and he starts believing him as god-man. Gurumurthy and others make Erra Seenu into Sri Krishnananda Swamy, a fake god man. A lawyer (Kalakeya Prabhakar), a police man and a politician hatch a plan to use this Baba's popularity and force him to sign on papers to establish a trust for the donations from the followers or they would expose him that he was a thief earlier. Erra Seenu aka Sri Krishnananda Swamy agrees to it. He plans to runaway with Rs 50 lakh after a few days but he then again sees Vasudha in the same apartment. Vasudha refuses love proposal and asks him to tell everyone that he is not baba then only she will agree to livehim. He readies but not everything goes as they plan.
 
Analysis
News about fake Baba's cheating women, grabbing land has regularly been coming. This is a topical issue. 'Dwaraka' has this relevant social issue as base for the story. Couple of years ago, a movie called 'Ayyare' was released. It was directed by Sagar Chandra. The film's basic plot and the storyline of 'Dwaraka' are almost similar. While the former focused mainly on fake baba's, this one has romantic angle. A thief but romantic -at-heart landing in a web of spiritual mafia, love and greediness for money is told here.

Director Srinivasa Ravindra run this story with two parallel threads - the love story of hero and heroine and the nexus of criminals, godmen and politicians. While the romantic part has many lighter moments, the latter thread as seriousness which isn't exciting. The strength of Vijay Devarakonda, the two film-old youngster, is being romantic and acting natural. Hence, the movie turns good whenever focus shifts on the love story.

The first half has lighter moments but the second half turns serious. There are some interesting scenes in the second half too - hero helping a cancer baby, Vijay's clever mind game with Kalekeya Prabhakar about trust issue. But all these are narrated at leisure pace. This is where the movie has done utterly bad - excessive runtime and slow narrative pace. Much of the scenes are told in TV serial way.

Vijay Devarakonda has come up with good performance. He has done a role that is very challenging one. The role requires a star with much experience. But he pulled it off convincingly. He is good as lover boy as also fake baba. Heroine Pooja Jhaveri has done what is required to do, she is okay. In the role of Gurumurthy, Prudhvi has come up with good laughs, though he doesn't do any comedy. Whatever he utters with his serious tone makes us chuckle. As a villain, Kalakeya Prabhakar is impressive. Murali Sharma is okay. Prakash Raj is good. Raghu Babu as politician is neat. Surekha Vani gets noticed.
 
Of the technicians, Lakshmi Bhupal's dialogues are noteworthy. There are some good gems. The film has good cinematography by Shyam K Naidu and decent production values. 'Enta Chitram Kada' is a good melody. Other than this song, no other song is impressive. Better music, better editing would have made a lot of difference. The editor should have trimmed the movie by 15 minutes as it is too lengthy. 

Bottom-line: 'Dwaraka' has relevant social subject as base for the story but it is told in serious way. Charming Vijay Devarakonda makes the film watchable. His acting is quite natural.