Naga Chaintanya hit the screens today with “Dhada”. The movie was directed by debutante Ajay Bhuyan and has been produced by Shiva Prasad Reddy. The movie has generated a good pre-release buzz for its stills as well as for the reported ‘trouble’ between Kajal and Chaitanya and this has led to good openings . Let us see how Dhada fares.

What’s it about : Vishwa (Naga Chaitanya) is a Telugu youth living in New York. He lives along with his brother(Sriram) and sister in law. Vishwa is a street smart guy and has the habit of getting into trouble to save people in trouble. Rhea(Kajal Aggarwal) is the unhappy daughter of a multimillionaire (Mukesh Rishi). She suffers from loneliness and depression. Her mother (Satya Krishna) reportedly commits suicide and Rhea spends most of her time watching old clippings of her mother in the basement.

Vishwa watches Rhea at an ice skating rink owned by Chocolate Janakiram (Brahmanandam) and falls in love with her. Janakiram has a weakness for beautiful women and Vishwa turns that into his advantage.He blackmails Janakiram and uses him in his attempts to woo Rhea.

Rahul Dev is a crime lord of New York city and he controls the prostitution and drug cartels there. He enters into a business deal with Kelly (Kelly Dorji), a Colombian drug lord, to supply women. Vishwa crosses the paths of these crime bosses accidentally while trying to save a woman and becomes their target.

Rhea’s father fixes her marriage with another millionaire and when Kajal opposes this for Vishwa, Rahul Dev is approached to assassinate him. Into all this mess comes in Vishwa’s brother(Sriram), in a twist to the story.

How Vishwa manages to solve all the problems and win Rhea forms the rest of the story.

What is Good : The movie is very stylishly shot and there is richness in every frame. Care has been taken to treat every frame with sophistication. (But in this process, they missed out on something else-We will come to that later.).

Chaitanya has improved tremendously in his dancing and fighting abilities and uses these to good effect in the movie. He looks good and his costumes are fantastic. Chaitanya has inherited his dad’s sense of style.

Kajal looks drop dead gorgeous in songs. The glamour quotient is extremely high and there is quite a bit of skin show.

Sriram looks good and he turned in a pretty good performance. Rahul Dev also turned in a decent performance even though his characterization was too similar to Raghuvaran’s in “Mass”.

All the songs were pretty nicely choreographed and looked good on screen. The fights are realistic and stylish. The ‘brother sentiment’ between Sriram and Chaitanya worked well.

Fights and a few action sequences were heavily borrowed from Hollywood. The prize fight in the ring is very similar to the sequence in Sherlock Holmes but it has come out well.

What is bad: Sadly, the care that was taken on style and presentation was not evident in the screenplay. The movie proceeds at a torturous pace in the second half and the patience of the audience is really tested. Songs keep butting in at irregular intervals and hinder the progress of the story. There are some illogical points as well.

Kajal doesn’t look very good with this new hairstyle. She looked ravishing in songs but pretty ordinary in the movie. The person who dubbed for Samantha in “Ye Maya Chesave” has dubbed for Kajal in this movie and it just does not suit her. You literally wince every time you hear Kajal ‘speak’ on screen.

Naga Chaitanya needs to really work on his dialogue delivery, especially in intense emotional scenes. There were a few laughs from the audience when Chaitanya was trying to utter some serious stuff.

We do not know if the rumours of a tiff between Chaitanya and Kajal are true. But they definitely do not have a good onscreen chemistry.

Comedy is the biggest let down. The movie has Brahmanandam, Dharmavarapu, Ali, M.S.Narayana, Venu Madhav and Uttej. Sadly, all of them are terribly wasted. They just come and go in a flash. Only Brahmanandam has some screen time but some of his scenes fail to evoke laughter. Especially the scene with Ali in the jungle was a bit ridiculous.

Technical Departments : Ajay Bhuyan is a disappointment. The director had absolutely no command over the story and his problem is his inability to use the talents of his actors. Kelly Dorji was absolutely wasted. So was Tanikella Bharani. With such an ensemble cast of comedy stars, the movie should have had much better comedy.

Devi Sri comes up with a good background score and the songs look better on screen than they sound. Cinematography is of a very high quality and adds to the stylish feel of the movie.

Editing is choppy. The flow is seriously hampered at times. Dialogues are pretty ok. -->

Analysis: Naga Chaitanya’s fans will be happy with the progress made by their hero in the areas of dancing and fighting. Apart from that, Dhada offers nothing for the regular movie goer. Sure, there’s tonnes of style and sophistication, but it doesn’t do much good when there is nothing else to back it up. The extremely slow pace of the movie in the second half is also a major let down. Apart from a few dances and fights, the B & C centres have nothing to look forward to either.

Dhada’s fate will depend upon Kandireega which releases tomorrow. All in all, a let down for Chaitanya after the success of 100% love.