Film Review: CHENNAI EXPRESS

There’s a very strong divide between ‘class’ and ‘crass’. Shah Rukh Khan bridges the gap with total ease

Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Sathyaraj, Nikitin Dheer
Director: Rohit Shetty

I was not too sure that I wanted to see the film after looking at the promos. But Venkat is an ardent fan of Shah Rukh Khan and wanted to go. I tagged along out of curiosity for the paid premiere on Thursday, August 8, 2013. That’s right! Curiosity did kill the cat. And as you can see, it has taken me four days to post the review.

THE STORY

Rahul (Shah Rukh Khan) has been orphaned since he was eight and brought up by his grandparents. The family owns and runs a sweetmeat shop. Rahul is tied down to his grandparents till he is 40 years old and his life revolves around them and the shop. His grandfather dies on his 100th birthday. Rahul is set the task of taking the old man’s ‘asthi’ to Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu. He plans to have fun with his friends in Goa instead. As his grandmother insists on taking him to the railway station to catch a train to South India, Rahul pretends to travel on Chennai Express. His life goes totally out of control from then on.

MY PERCEPTION

I used to adore Shah Rukh Khan – please note the past tense. He’s an excellent and versatile actor. DDLJ is my most favourite film till date. Of course, there have been some debacles – especially under the helm of Red Chillies Entertainment – such as Ram Jaane, Guddu, English Babu Desi Mein, Paheli, and Ra.One, to name a few. I personally liked Paheli, but the film was not a success.

I so wish the actor will take up interesting roles as he gets older. Chak De was an excellent film and SRK’s performance was just brilliant. If I remember right, the budget for this film was not too big and there was not too much marketing involved either.

I see a kind of desperation in the marketing tactics for Chennai Express. Is it because the content is so ‘khokla’ that it is so? Every TV channel you tune into is talking about Chennai Express, while they are trying to get Kashmir and Kanyakumari together by selling it all the way from the North Pole to the South Pole.

Yes, I also heard the news that they have crossed the 100 crore mark. Why not? Ticket rates are soaring, especially so for the Eid weekend. Everyone wants to see the film – including me – because SRK is starring in it. But does that mean I made an intelligent decision when I spent Rs. 250 for seeing this crap? Most definitely not!

I do like masala flicks – the Rohit Shetty kind – Golmaal: Fun Unlimited (only the first one in the series, mind you); Singham and Bol Bachchan were quite good. But there is a limit to which one can tolerate beefed up thugs, smashed jeeps and prolonged fight sequences. They get more ridiculous with each film.

Chennai Express takes the cake! The thugs are taller and wider with Nikitin Dheer topping the list. I wonder what kind of steroids they must be consuming to be like this. They stand around like baboons with vacant expressions, not adding an iota of value to the film.

Shah Rukh Khan insists that Rahul is all of forty years old. Why the hell does he not behave his age? Rahul’s antics suggest someone who is in Junior College. Need I say more?

The ‘kashin bradhars’ don’t understand Hindi anyway. Rahul and Meenamma (Deepika Padukone) could have comfortably conversed in the language. Why sing antaksharis and torture the audience? If they thought it was comical, they surely have another think coming. Many of the dialogues were in Tamil and then translated into Hindi. To someone like me who speaks both languages, it was prolonged agony. I am sure they could have handled it differently - maybe with captions.

I originate from Chennai and have travelled by Chennai Express at least a hundred times. I have not once noticed the scenes that unfold in the film. Yes, they are scenic, but absolutely inauthentic. Kathakali is the regional dance of Kerala; a Tamil woman wears her nose-ring on her right nostril; a guy carrying his wife up the staircase of a temple is probably borrowed from Karnataka. While Meenamma wears a nose-ring on the left, the other sequences don’t have anything to do with Chennai or Tamil Nadu. Well, these are the goof ups that I noticed. There could have been many more. Shoddy research indeed!

The final fight sequence was the extreme limit. Rahul is a ‘halwaai’ and quite small in stature. He is just a ‘common man’ as he screams to us at least 30 times during the film. He is forty. How could he fight thugs who are thrice his size just to prove his love? Bizarre!

Among all this mess, I was truly impressed with Deepika Padukone’s performance. The actress has obviously been working hard and improving her skills. She’s excellent as Meenalochani despite the stupid accent. In fact, it quite adds to her charms. And she looks gorgeous too! Kudos Deepika! You are truly a Bollywood Queen today!

I would like to believe that Shah Rukh Khan is quite bright. Did he not see the final cut of the film? Anyone with half the intelligence would have seen it for the crack-pot film that it is. The film will probably appeal the people in the slums, thanks to its slapstick humour and sickle-wielding thugs.

While SRK has grown in years, it does not appear that he has matured as an actor. If you want to do romance, do one as a fifty-year-old or have a script written for you in the lines of Amitabh Bachchan’s Cheeni Kum. Do not torture us with this kind of a stupid film.

VERDICT: Watch it at your own risk

RATING: ** Shaky (one star belongs to Deepika Padukone and none to SRK)

*Silly
**Shaky
***Smart
****Snazzy
*****Super

Film Review: RA-ONE

I think it's high time that SRK accepts his age and tries to create special roles to suit him - something in the lines of Chak De. This film is all hype and no show

Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Arjun Rampal, Dalip Tahil, Shahana Goswami, Armaan Verma
Director: Anubhav Sinha

I had a very bad feeling about this one from Red Chillies Entertainment as the films produced by SRK’s company have only one thing going – SRK starring in them. And most of the time, even that does not help. Anyway, I went to see it because my daughter and husband were keen to go. And that's how we caught the 10.30 pm show on Diwali.

THE STORY: Shekhar Subramaniam (Shah Rukh Khan) works for a video gaming company called Barron Industries run by Dalip Tahil. Jenny (Shahana Goswami) is a co-worker and so is Jackie Chan (Tom Wu). Shekhar is a South Indian (Tamil) who is married to Sonia (Kareena Kapoor) and their son is preteen Prateek (Armaan Verma).

Prateek is a typical school kid who is impressed by mighty villains. He quite dislikes his father’s nerdy nature and tries to be ‘cool’ most of the time. When the boss demands that a new video game be created, Shekhar goes on to create a game that has a dominant villain – Ra-One – who is undefeatable. This is done at his son’s suggestion and soon Prateek is enamoured by both the game and his father’s skills.

Unfortunately, Ra-One has the power to re-invent himself and is keen to get out of the game and kill Lucifier – the nickname that Prateek uses to play the game. He does just that and soon Shekhar is killed.

Not knowing the actual situation, Sonia decides to move to India to their family home along with Prateek.

Watch the film to see what happens when Ra-One decides to follow Lucifer (Prateek) to India and kill him.

MY PERCEPTION: On the positive side, the animation was just fantastic. That’s about it.

SRK comes up with different hair-styles – each one of them sucks. His make-up and act as a Tamilian was simply horrible. I felt it more so because I am myself a Tamilian. His hair-style was stupid, his accent was dumb and whatever.

SRK as G-One was better. He did well. But the sad part was there was too much masala, making the whole presentation a mix-up of cuisines ending up in a mess, if you know what I mean.

Kareena Kapoor was good and the song Chammak Challo was very good. Armaan Verma did well in his role as Prateek.

Arjun Rampal was good as the villain although his part was minuscule. He looked hot with his head shaved off. Considering that he does not have a great range to his expressions, the role fitted him perfectly with one vengeful expression throughout the shot.

I can relate to a film that begins at A and ends with Zee with a lot of incidents thrown in between. This one started at A and took off in many different directions before falling plop on its face at Zee.

I don’t have a clue about making films, but my hand itched to take over at so many points where I would have handled the sequences way differently than they actually were.

The 3-D was pretty non-existent. In fact, a couple of days before Diwali, I had read somewhere that the 3-D effort was not taking off. Hence, I wanted to watch a 2-D version. But there were none available at Cinemax Sion. Maybe nowhere!

If I wore the glasses, I could see 2 images in most of the scenes. If I took them off, I saw 4 images. A quaint experience, indeed! But at what cost!

Rajnikant popping into the film for a 1-minute sequence as Chitti was nothing short of ridiculous. It just had nothing to do with the film. And the superhero looked quite ill. Why the director or producer never noticed that one, amazes me.

You cannot quite call it a kids’ film with the kind of dance sequences, fight sequences and dialogues on ‘condom’. It was not entertaining enough for adults. And after all this, Shah Rukh Khan plans to impress the world population. That’s some gall!

VERDICT: Yet another waste of money for me, folks! This time, I don’t even have the excuse that it was worth it for SRK’s sake.

RATING: ** Shaky

* Silly
** Shaky
*** Smart
**** Snazzy
***** Super

Film Review: MY NAME IS KHAN (from the epiglottis)

Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, Jimmy Shergill, Zarina Wahab

Director: Karan Johar

Before I talk about the film, I have to mention that we went to Cinemax Sion where there was a lot of security against the Shiv Sena that had threatened to stop the screening of MNIK. And here I thought we were living in one of the hugest democracies in the world! But luckily for us, there was no problem there. If this was a promotion gimmick, they could not have done it better.

The Story: Rizwan Khan (Shah Rukh Khan) suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome. This particular problem is named after Dr. Hans Asperger who first noticed it in children. It does not mean that the one suffering from this is not intelligent. The person takes everything at face value. He cannot understand it when people say one thing while meaning another. He understands only straightforward talk.

At the beginning of the movie, Rizwan is on his way to meet the President of the USA. He wants to tell him, “My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist”. The film goes in flashback to show us why Rizwan feels the urge to do so.

Rizwan is brought up by a loving mother who does not understand what his problem is but encourages him to do his best in everything. The most important lesson she teaches him is that there are only two types of people – the good and the bad. Rizwan is privately tutored as the other kids treat him badly at school and learns to repair all electronic stuff. He goes to settle with his brother (Jimmy Shergill) in California after their mother’s death.

He meets Mandira (Kajol), the divorced single parent of Sameer. Rizwan woos her in his own style and they get married despite her being a Hindu. Soon after, the 9/11 attack happens and the safety of all Muslims is threatened. The film goes on to show how this affects the life of the Khan family and why Rizwan sets out to meet the US President.

My perception: Shah Rukh Khan has yet again proved that he is the King Khan. He is simply amazing in his role as Rizwan and it is his movie throughout. Considering that the role is quite different from the romantic or negative ones that we have seen SRK in, this was just fabulously portrayed. I was not too impressed with the promos that I saw but I am glad that I went to see the film. There is just nobody in this generation of actors who could have done better in this role.

Kajol as Mandira and Rizwan’s wife is just perfect and no other actress could have done the role better than she. The scene where she cries her heart out over her only child’s death breaks your heart. Kajol also looks gorgeous in her part as a beautician, divorced single parent.

The film has been made very well and thankfully without the usual over-the-top extravagances that one gets to expect from Karan Johar.

It did make me wonder why there is should be one more movie on the 9/11 attacks nine years after and whether this will create more ill-will and negativity. But the subject has been approached from a totally different angle that is a must to the public. It has beautifully shown the angle of those innocents who bear the brunt of the actions of a few fanatics.

What was kind of irritating was that some of the dialogues have been jabardasti converted to Hindi while the film is in Hinglish. While Rizwan speaks a lot of English, his speech at the church in Wilhelmina, Georgia, in front of an Afro-American audience is in Hindi or that’s how it has been shown to the viewers. And then, Mandira’s best American friend Sara leaves her a voice message in pure Hindi. I fail to understand how these things could have escaped the notice of both the director and the editor. And just for this I will need to give four stars instead of five for a super film.

To see or not to see: Do not miss it. It is most definitely worth the time and money spent.
Rating: ****Snazzy

* Silly

** Shaky

*** Smart

**** Snazzy

***** Super