Shabara Review: A Cosmic Tollywood Adventure

Dheekshith Shetty plays Arjun, a man whose life gets yanked off its rails by forces that seem equal parts ancient prophecy and plain old bad luck. The film's premise - an adventure literally written in the stars and stretching across time - gives Chand license to hop between eras and realms, and he takes full advantage. Misha Narang, Mohan Bhagath, Bhushan Kalyan, Rajeev Pillai, and Kritika Singh round out a cast that's clearly having a blast playing in this sandbox. The narrative spine involves cosmic destiny, hidden histories, and the kind of MacGuffin that would make Indiana Jones check his calendar twice. Does it all cohere? Not always. But the movie's conviction is genuinely infectious, and by the time the pieces start snapping together, you're invested enough to forgive the detours.

Let's start with the good news: Shabara looks like money. The production design leans into a mythic, starlit aesthetic that gives the film a genuine sense of scale, and Chand directs his set pieces with real energy. There's a chase sequence in the first hour that had my whole row leaning forward, and the film's recurring visual motif - constellations as narrative breadcrumbs - is the kind of idea that makes you sit up and pay attention.

Dheekshith Shetty carries the movie on his shoulders and mostly pulls it off. He's got the unglamorous, scrappy quality that makes an everyman hero work, and he sells the emotional beats even when the script hands him dialogue that sounds like it was translated through three languages and a horoscope app. Misha Narang makes an impression in a role that could have been wallpaper, and Rajeev Pillai brings a menacing gravity to the antagonist side of the ledger.

The problems are structural. For a movie about time and destiny, Shabara has a curious habit of losing its own thread. The middle stretch sags under exposition dumps, and the tonal whiplash between earnest mythology and slapstick humor could give you cinematic vertigo. Chand clearly loves his influences - you can spot nods to everything from classic adventure serials to modern Telugu spectacle - but homage occasionally tips into pastiche.

And then there's the ending, which I won't spoil, except to say it swings big. Whether it lands depends entirely on how much you've bought into the movie's cosmic logic. I bought maybe seventy percent of it, which felt like a fair trade for the ride.

Pros

• Dheekshith Shetty's grounded, committed lead performance anchors the chaos
• Stunning mythic visuals and a genuinely clever constellation motif
• Set pieces crackle with energy, especially in the first hour
• Supporting cast brings real personality to underwritten roles

Cons

• Middle act drowns in exposition and loses narrative momentum
• Tonal shifts between earnest myth and comedy are jarring
• Some plot threads from the "across time" premise get dropped entirely
• Dialogue occasionally plays like a fortune cookie convention

Shabara is the kind of movie that makes you want to hand it a gold star for effort and a note that says "see me after class." It's overstuffed, overambitious, and occasionally overcooked - but it's also never boring, and in a landscape of cookie-cutter adventures, that counts for something. Kilaru Prem Chand has a genuine visual imagination and a leading man worth building around. If he tightens up the script next time, Tollywood might have a real franchise on its hands.