Mass Jathara

I went in with some hopes for Mass Jathara, but it didn’t take the makers 15 minutes to squander all of those expectations. From the establishing sequence, underlined with a derivative background music piece for our hero figure Laxman (Ravi Teja) that only reminds us of other recent crowd-pleasers like Coolie and OG, it becomes clear that Mass Jathara has no intention of doing anything new or different, and wants to remain content with its derivative choices. Almost every scene here reeks of a certain cynicism stems out of a strong self-belief about what ‘commercial cinema’ means and must be relegated to. Anything outside that box becomes risky, so we must avoid it — Mass Jathara plays by this rule annoyingly to a fault. The narrative sticks to the oldest conventionals of masala movies. There is no sense of mood or emotional integrity to the proceedings.

It has the routine central conflict of an infallible hero matching up to a merciless villain(s), but with a kind of writing that hasn’t evolved with the times, the payoff is just as routine and dull as one would expect. The very idea of masculinity in today’s Telugu movie is in dire need of an upgrade, and Mass Jathara confirms this further: for instance, the bad guy’s animalistic instincts are made evident in how he holds the woman he loves hostage by literally chaining her to a pillar. In a later scene, when the good guy does the rescue act, he ends it with a proposition that should the bad guy survive the next few days, he could “have” the woman to himself regardless.

By the time you reach the halfway mark, you realise ‘Mass Jathara’ isn’t chasing depth. It’s chasing recall: the feeling of watching a Ravi Teja film the way you did a decade ago. It knows its flaws but is too content in its nostalgia to fix them. And maybe that’s where its charm lies—in being a self-aware entertainer that celebrates excess while showing how cyclical the genre has become.

Even the routine nature of the script isn’t the main issue. It would be better if makers of commercial potboilers focused more on the writing so that the basic story feels more impactful. The second half runs on a single thread, the songs fail to leave an impression, and by the time the film reaches its climax, it completely runs out of steam. The emotions don’t work at all.

We can see Raviteja’s usual energy at many places but it is high time for him to realise that he is not the Raviteja of ‘Idiot’, ‘Bhadra’ and ‘Venky’ anymore. His mannerisms used to be good in the aforementioned movies and multiple other movies but not anymore. Especially, the romantic track between him and Sreeleela looked very odd. Mass Jathara has many notable actors and it is one of those rare films where almost all actors delivered below-par and over-the-top performances. Rajendra Prasad’s character was poorly written. Particularly, his flirting sequences with multiple women, were of very poor taste. Naveen Chandra’s role has a very weak characterisation. All he did throughout the film was to scream and scream and scream some more. Sreeleela’s performance is subpar to say the least and so is Naresh’s and all other actors’ performance.