Mass Jathara Movie Review: One tiring cliche after another

Mass Jathara Movie Review:

Mass movies, and the inherent need for them in a film-going culture like ours. I get it, this need to cater to an audience section whose taste might goes beyond the rigid ideas of storytelling and aesthetics.  But as they make one routine film after another, with the exact same template and elements, I often wonder if any of the leading film artists ever experience some sort of existential dread about their choices. If everything they do is for the appeasement of audience, that has now come to a point where they reject it more easily  — what is it all for?

Director: Bhanu Bogavarapu

Cast: Ravi Teja, Rajendra Prasad, Sreeleela, Naveen Chandra

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. One genre is followed by the other. After an emotionally heavy scene, we instantly cut to a comic scene. After a brutal action scene, the writers make space for a filler song-and-dance sequence — and the cycle continues.  The more the film refuses to take itself seriously, the more you get worried — because you know all of it is building up towards a quintessential climactic action set piece scored with spiritual chants.

The only interesting element in the film is a group of unusual criminals who are the perfect candidates for executing a brutal violent assassination. The casting of these actors is good too, but Mass Jathara doesn’t know what to do with them beyond a point. There is another fun surprise with Sreeleela’s character who appears to be a demure teacher at first, but is more secretive within, something that won’t go down well with the wide-eyed Laxman (Ravi Teja) who is smitten with her simplicity. And yet, like most cliches go, the makers can’t help but give a twist to her morally ambiguous job, where eventually, any shade of grey, no matter how interesting, always comes with a tragic backstory and eventually becomes white. Sreeleela tries hard to imbibe the quirky nature of her character, but falters. Ravi Teja brings his goofy charm to some scenes, but it’s not enough to sustan our throughout.

Amidst all the mayhem is Naveen Chandra, playing a local drug mafia head named Shiva, who does his best to bring some sense of intensity to the proceedings. However, after a gruesome, fear-inducing intro scene, Shiva is reduced to a hapless caricature as Laxman outsmarts him at every counter like it’s childplay. With a half-baked role that’s sacrificed at the altar of a hero-worshipping narrative that doesn’t understand the significance of a strong antagonist, Naveen is left to struggle on how own — Shiva loses his aura, and with that, the film loses too, whatever little potential it had. 

Underneath all the worn-out strokes is a vaguely interesting protagonist — a railway police officer who is tired of not being taken seriously. By default, he has come to be seen a ‘lesser cop,’ and it doesn’t sit well with him. Laxman might not be able to clean up the crime in entire town, but that railway station belongs to him, and he will make the best of it. There are some moments where the film promises to play on this thread, before disappointing us again. Similarly, the entirely second half rides on a singular note — Laxman must keep Shiva and his army at bay from this one large consignment of marijuana that can destroy their entire trade. There is a larky quality to how wafer-thin the plot is, and the writers had the chance to something really campy here. But with the screenplay being so consistently cliched, it’s hard to hold any interest in the proceedings.

The most telling decision by the Mass Jathara team is a tangential 30-second monologue by Ravi Teja, as he rants about the negativity of social media. Like most things in the screenplay, it doesn’t add anything to the narrative — and yet, it’s amusingly emblematic of how the Mass Jathara team views its audience, while desperately trying to cater to them. However, this is 2025 and Telugu film-lovers deserve better than stereotypes — be it in their movies or the perceptions filmmakers carries about its audience.