Film: Chennai Express
Starring: Shahrukh Khan,Deepika Padukone
Director: Rohit Shetty
Producer: Gauri Khan
Banner: Red Chillies Entertainment
Music: Vishal–Shekhar
The rest of the film resembles those
typical sambar-and-sandalwood creations by K. Raghvendra Rao, and worse
still, Raj Kanwar's "Dhai Akshar Prem Ke" where Aishwarya to escape her
parental wrath at her elopement, introduces to her family a man she has
just met as her soul-mate.
Of course, there are the flying cars
exploding in the air to make sure we know that all said and drummed,
this is a Rohit Shetty presentation.
Packaged with pickled precision,
peppered with just the right doses of naughty jokes and precocious
pranks that go well with Shah Rukh's 40-year-old brat's act, "Chennai
Express" is the kind of non-toxic comic entertainer where the most
damaging double-entendres you'd get is a Tamil word that sounds like
Angelina Jolie's name.
Come again?
That brings me to another major hurdle in the heap of hilarity that Shetty builds so meticulously in the first-half.
The generous outflow of Tamil that seems
initially engaging (more so, since Shah Rukh shares our
non-comprehension of the rapidfire Tamilian cloudburst that accompanies
Deepika's quicksilver character) begins to come in the way as the
narration grows older and runs out of energy.
But then there is the sprightly Deepika
as the runaway Tamilian girl who piles on to the North Indian mithaiwala
stranger to escape marrying the boorish fiancee back home in her
village in Tamil Nadu.
We've seen Kareena Kapoor do the chirpy
runaway train traveller in "Jab We Met". Deepika brings a special
filtered-coffee flavour to her chirpy character. Even that broad hammy
accent grows on us.
Yes, we like! Here she is is the only
Rohit Shetty team member (and I use the term 'team' since Shetty
generously credits the direction to himself and his team) who seems to
have a firm grip over her rudderless dithering character.
Deepika plays Meena Amma with flavourful
flourish. She is specially delightful in three key sequences, two of
them comic and the other unexpectedly sombre.
In the sequence where her character
turns into a sleeping, kicking and convulsive zombie, she's unbelievably
goofy. It's not just Shah Rukh who gets a kick out of that scene.
Would Rohit Shetty please do a
full-fledged out-and-out comedy with Deepika? That, "Chennai Express" is
not. It is a half-hearted but laugh-hearted effort that makes the fatal
error of taking itself too seriously.
Towards the end when the utterly shammed
climactic fight ensues, we even have a long speech by Shah Rukh on the
social status of the girl child.
Not now, please!
As we squirm at the attempt to turn
comedy into a serious business we look back at the rest of the film with
some amount of warmth and affection.
Some of the long shots of the train
winding through green acres is breathtaking. And Shah Rukh's first
meeting with Deepika's father over a bridge over a fast-flowing river is
shot with amazing brio.
There's a wonderfully-shot sequence
where Shah Rukh has to carry Deepika to a temple over hundreds of steps.
Deepika here goes from amusement and mockery to a sense of belonging
and pride in her man's arms. It's a moment built with care and love.
But then, such tender affection really
has no place in this comedy of cultural dispossession where the Punjabi
boy Rahul gets embroiled in Tamil girl Meena's family affairs and comes
out... well not quite wiser. But filled with self-mocking laughter.
Shah Rukh pokes a whole lot of
good-natured fun at his now-aging lover-boy persona. There are
tongue-in-cheek references to "Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge" and several
other Shah Rukh Khan films and songs including the introductory South
Indian lines from the "Jiya jale" song in "Dil Se".
All these self-tributes work better than what Puri Jagganath did with the Bachchan persona "Buddha... Hoga Tera Baap".
Rohit Shetty is more in command of his
canvas here than in his last comedy "Bol Bachchan". But the
self-deprecatory laughter is still not good enough. Somewhere you feel
the one-line plot (okay, if not one then two-line plot) is stretched
into an unwelcome second-half where nothing really happens. Even the
humour tracks stops short beyond a point.
But there is some genuine steam and spark in the early part of "Chennai Express".
Towards the beginning of the train
journey when Deepika and Shah Rukh play a kind of antakshari of Hindi
film songs to put the goons off her trail, Deepika completely
overshadows her kingly co-star, who should be okay with being upstaged
by his female co-star.
After all he has given Deepika priority
over his own name in the credit titles. And Deepika takes the lead very
seriously. She has never looked better and never been funnier on screen
without even trying too hard.
But then the plot and the situations let
her down. The antakshari-speak that was amusing in the beginning recurs
during a stale fight sequence in the second-half.
We are no longer laughing. Not when Shah
Rukh's purported big chase sequences end in embarrassing deadends. Not
when an item song with incoherent words and even more misguided
logistics pops up like a joke whose punchline has gone missing.
Through all of this, Shah Rukh Khan
braves it with a delicious sense of self-mockery bordering almost on a
masochistic absence of heroic pride.
Yes, he likes it when the joke is on him. But that happens once too often here.
So it's finally here. The film that all
Shah Rukh Khan fans (which covers half the hemisphere) has been waiting
for. The good news first. "Chennai Express" is a pleasant and likable
film in parts. The bad news is, it does nothing for Shah Rukh Khan's
imdomitable star power except to tell us he can still play a 40-year
Rahul without faltering.