{"id":40,"date":"2021-05-26T10:00:42","date_gmt":"2021-05-26T14:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/?p=40"},"modified":"2021-05-26T10:00:44","modified_gmt":"2021-05-26T14:00:44","slug":"dhamaka-dir-omar-lulu-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/2021\/05\/26\/dhamaka-dir-omar-lulu-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Dhamaka (dir. Omar Lulu, 2020)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em><span class=\"has-inline-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-color\">This post first appeared on Totally Filmi on December 15, 2020.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eyo (Arun A. Kumar) is a young man with no credentials and not much going for him \u2013 he freely admits he hasn\u2019t finished his B. Tech degree (and is highly unlikely to do so).\u00a0 He\u2019s unable to find a job \u2013 even his sketchy friend Shiva (Dharmajan Bolgatty) manages to find work. \u00a0His father, Pauly (Mukesh) arranges his marriage to Annie (Nikki Galrani) \u2013 a situation that causes some concern in the family, because Annie is divorced.\u00a0 But Annie is from a wealthy family, and Eyo becomes smitten with her.\u00a0 Despite the perceived shame this could bring to his family, Eyo agrees to the match.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But Eyo\u2019s problems begin on his wedding night, when he finds himself experiencing performance anxiety, and is unable to consummate the relationship with Annie.&nbsp; Fearing bringing Yet More Shame to his family, Eyo follows Shiva\u2019s suggestion to see the appropriately named Dr. Sexena (Hareesh Kanaran) \u2013 a sexologist, of course \u2013 who promises to solve Eyo\u2019s problems.&nbsp; It\u2019s obvious that Dr. Sexena is just as sketchy as Shiva, and he recommends an expensive cure \u2013 a special \u201ctsunami\u201d concoction that he assures Eyo will solve everything.&nbsp; When Pauly accidentally drinks the glass of milk into which Eyo has put the tsunami blend, the result is something the family sees as yet another shameful event:&nbsp; Eyo\u2019s mother, Annamma (Urvashi) falls pregnant. But it\u2019s thanks to Annamma and her visit to Dr. Gopinath (Salim Kumar in a reliable cameo) that Eyo\u2019s problems find a solution.&nbsp; Dr. Gopinath is kind and practical, and tells Eyo he doesn\u2019t need what amounts to Sexena\u2019s snake oil \u2013 instead, he needs a honeymoon with Annie, and some time and space to allow some love to grow in their quickly arranged marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Dhamaka<\/strong>\u00a0is silly and shiny, filled with movie and other pop culture references \u2013 some of which I get after many years of Malayalam film watching, others that I know are some kind of reference which I can\u2019t grasp.\u00a0 And that\u2019s okay &#8212; I fully understand that Omar Lulu\u2019s films are not targetted at me, and\u00a0<strong>Dhamaka<\/strong>\u00a0is no exception.\u00a0 And although I also understand that there are sections of Malayalam society that *will* find shame in divorce, late life pregnancy, and erectile dysfunction, I still am uncomfortable with using those issues to make cheap jokes, and there are cheap jokes aplenty in\u00a0<strong>Dhamaka<\/strong>.\u00a0 That said, there are some truly funny moments in the film \u2013 most particularly the running gag of whatever Eyo\u2019s sister Pinky (Shaalin Zoya) is watching on television reflecting the state of Eyo\u2019s problem.\u00a0 Yes, I laughed.\u00a0 Out loud, even.\u00a0 \u00a0And there is an interesting little moment of social commentary when Shiva lands his job because of a viral video of him selling fish &#8212; clearly a reference to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wXEdULQhb5s\">Hanan Hamid<\/a>, the student who was trolled online for selling fish to support her studies.\u00a0 In the end, it wasn\u2019t enough to save the film for me, which was watchable for those brief moments when Urvashi was on screen, and for the message from Dr. Gopinath \u2013 that these kinds of issues aren\u2019t shameful, and it\u2019s always better to talk to a proper medical professional.\u00a0 Small mercies in an otherwise forgettable film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><span class=\"has-inline-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-color\"><strong>Dhamaka<\/strong>\u00a0was supposed to release in 2019, but ended up the first Malayalam release of 2020.\u00a0 Little did we know it would not be a year for celebrations of any kind.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post first appeared on Totally Filmi on December 15, 2020. Eyo (Arun A. Kumar) is a young man with no credentials and not much going for him \u2013 he freely admits he hasn\u2019t finished his B. Tech degree (and is highly unlikely to do so).\u00a0 He\u2019s unable to find&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/2021\/05\/26\/dhamaka-dir-omar-lulu-2020\/\">Continue Reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Dhamaka (dir. Omar Lulu, 2020)<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[41,44,42,49,40,14,45,47,48,43,46,50],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-arun-a-kumar","tag-dhamaka","tag-dharmajan-bolgatty","tag-hareesh-kanaran","tag-innocent","tag-malayalam-movies","tag-mollywood","tag-mukesh","tag-nikki-galrani","tag-omar-lulu","tag-salim-kumar","tag-urvashi","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions\/43"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}