Dubai Seenu Review

Under suitable pressure, most people will confess that the main reason that they go to a Ravi Teja film is the comedy. He wouldn't be as much fun without his motor-mouth dialogue delivery, his exaggerated mannerisms, and all the other funnymen of Tollywood plumped in with him to make you giggle, squeal and bounce around in happiness.

Which is perhaps where Dubai Seenu misses the bus, or is at least huffing to catch it. While there are attempts at comedy all through, the creativity is not in the league of an Idiot or a Vikramarkudu. Add to that a plot that keeps hopping between the present and the past rather un-coordinatedly, and a thoroughly soulless role for Nayantara, and it becomes a film that was more interesting when it was still being made.

So Srinivas Rao (Ravi Teja), also called Dubai Seenu by his friends for his enthusiasm to move to Dubai, is a middle-class simpleton from Vizag who, along with his friends, is duped by a crook Tataji (Venu Madhav) in Mumbai of all his money that he gets along to go to Dubai. They all then set up a Pav Bhaji shop by the road there with help from Patnaik (Krishna Bhagawan), an unscrupulous penny businessman.

Srinivas falls in love with Madhumita (Nayantara), and fibs to her that he is a software professional. Well, several people do that everyday in interviews in Hyderabad for software jobs, but Srinivas does not have the main thing to back that up – a 1-month course from NIIT. So when Madhumita finds out that he isn't a software professional, she dumps him and goes to Hyderabad.

Srinivas follows her there, and finds her being pursued by a Circle Inspector Babji (Sayaji Shinde), who wants to marry her against her wishes. Suddenly, Srinivas also lands up in the liar of Jinnah (Sushant Singh), a terrorist, and kills his brother, causing Jinnah to swear vile retribution.

The rest of the movie progresses along predictable lines, with some songs, some fights and a flashback, that features, after a long time, J D Chakravarthy. Whatever comedy there was too now evaporates as the violence sets in in typical Tollywood second half style, except for a brief funny track involving M S Narayana. No, we won't spoil it for you by telling you what he plays, but yes, it looks like he's mocking someone big.

Ravi Teja is his normal self – all revved up with energy. Nayantara, playing an RJ, doesn't have anything to do except be in the songs, and her character completely lacks any depth. Also, her reason for walking away from Srinivas when she is told he is not a software professional, is one of the examples of the sloppiness in writing in the film – another being how Srinivas gets some women to slap Babji in a party.

The film has plenty of comedians, but, like we said, not enough comedy. The first half is still okay, it's the second that could have been much better. The music is average stuff, with the title song being fairly good. Incidentally, the film appears to have retained some scenes that the censors apparently ordered deleted (Prasads has the censor certificate and details outside the screen) – e. g. the word “lamdike", and a slitting of the throat of a girl with a knife.

Dubai Seenu is worth a watch given the lack to any alternate options. And if you like Ravi Teja in general, it's worth your money.