Chandni Chowk to China

Rating 3/10
Running Time : 154 Minutes
Release Date : 16th January, 2009
Director : Nikhil Advani ; Writer : Rajat Arora, Sridhar Raghavan; Music : Sneha Khanwalkar
Starring : Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Ranvir Shorey, Mithun Chakraborty, Roger Huan, Chia Hui Liu

This is a great movie for those who’ve had 6 beers (or an equivalent amount of alcohol), or for kids (and those similarly intellectually inclined) or those who are fans of the mindless timepass genre, where you leave your brains at home, land up for the movie and then giggle aimlessly for the next three hours.

All others, like me, will find this movie a disaster. And the sad thing is that they had an interesting premise – a Chinese village, suffering from a tyrant, finds out that they can be freed by an ancient warrior who has been reborn in India. But then its almost as if the ‘brains’ behind the film decided to see how much they could dumb it down, how much unneccessary slapstick & nautanki they could throw in, how complicated (actually that’s too soft a word, convoluted is probably better) they could make the plot. How many films could they ‘borrow’ from – there are shades of Mr Natwarlal, Goldfinger and most old Hindi movies, with the whole twins separated at birth, amnesiac father et all. And in general, how far away from reality could they go…

If it weren’t for Akshay, who still comes through with at least his acting reputation intact, if not his judgement, the rating would be even lower. Deepika is ok, looks good as always. Most others, well actually I’m being unfair on the actors as they were probably doing what they were told. And the songs were in keeping with the rest of the film. Effects, scenery and cinematography is decent. Fight sequences are ok ok - again too far away from reality for me to enjoy, they've almost created a real-life version of Kungfu Panda.

I actually had high expectations from this one (because the premise was interesting) and maybe that’s why I’m so disappointed. I laughed only once or twice throughout the film, most other times I was cringing, or holding my head in my hands. The audience was 50-50, a few walking out in the interval, despite having paid Rs 260 per ticket and some others laughing everytime the director intended them to. They’re actually planning a sequel to this, but despite being set in Africa, a herd of wildebeest couldn’t drag me to that one…