Rasool Ellore's Bhageeratha is about Venkataratnam and the promise he made to his friend Bullabai about having a bridge built for their village to solve their woes, and he vows not to return to the village until it happens. Years pass but the bridge nor Venkataratnam arrive so Bullabai sends his son, Chandu, to check on the progress as villagers lose hope. Chandu goes to Hyderabad to see Venkataratnam's true colors and learns about the hate he has for the village as they caused the suicide of his father. The rest of the movie is about how Chandu cons Venkataratnam into having the bridge constructed and reuniting with his father, Bullabai.
The movie is a proper commercial flick with the right amount of masala, drama, emotions, comedy, and romance. Granted some of the love track has it's cliches, like the heroine being very over the top, yet Rasool deals with it in a decent manner by keeping it cute and short. The comedy is quite well done, especially Venu Madhav's scenes. Ravi Teja is at his best and stands out, along with Prakash Raj. The Prakash Raj-Ravi Teja scenes are well designed. I like that the movie avoids solving everything with fights like some recent flicks, but instead has the main lead use his brains and struggle and fall at some points.
The emotion between Bullabai and Venkataratnam is quite sad, we see the initial twist about Venkataratnam coming from a mile away, but it works and the emotion it provides, along with Vijaykanth's acting sustains the emotion til the end. Seeing the two characters reunite and the overall climax, our heart warms like nothing else. This isn't common for a masala movie, so kudos to Rasool Ellore for being able to do that.
I liked seeing Chandhu, Ravi Teja, struggle, fall, and rise to make money and con Venkata Ratnam. The fights don't occur til needed and even then have a slight twist to make them interesting to watch. Nassar was nice to watch on Chandhu's side and Jeeva was another well written character as a landgrabber.
Overall, this is a good movie that deserved more praise and success. It feels so good to see Ravi Teja in form, wish he would pull off something similar now.
