Chennai express – as bad as a journey in an Indian Railways train)
(don’t worry if your Wait listed ticket doesn't get confirmed)
Rohit Shetty wanted to make a Hindi
movie and ended making a Tamil Movie, without written subtitles What a fall for
Rohit Sheetty from Goolmaal (2006) to Chennai Express (2013). From the effortless rib tickling comedy Goolmall,
with great repetitive value, to a laboured effort to make a ketch up comedy
which is very ridiculous, if not offensive, to Tamilians/South Indians. Rohit Shetty made very successful straight
Hindi movies followed by remake of Tamil movie Singam and now seems to have
confused whether to make a straight Hindi movie or a remake and ended up making
a Tamil movie with Sharukh khan who mouths funny dialogues in Tamil and serious
dialogues in Hindi and the villain gives a blank expression to both.
Nothing to write about the story
(as a matter of fact none of Rohit Shetty movies ever had any strong story line, and in this aspect Rohit Shetty has almost become Manmohan Desai of these times), but unlike other Rohit
Shetty’s earlier movies neither comedy was good nor the action scenes. Casting used to be the strong point in Rohit
Sheety’s movies with so many stars being given a well defined role and even side kicks putting their best. I still remember Sidharth
doing a tiny comedy scene, may be at the most in 3-4 frames in Goolmall making
unsuccessful attempt to kills Ajay devgan and his friends and generating such a
humour. He is now a regular in Comedy
show in Sony for many years. In Chennai
express casting is disastrous staring from Sharukh who looks old and jaded (thankfully
he was introduced as 40 yrs and Deepika pokes him to be 50), followed by one
time small time Tamil hero and character actor Sathyaraj, who seems to be overawed
by the presence of Sharukh and the fact that he is acting in a Hindi movie to
such an extent that in the entire movie has one expression only. I see atleast 100 South Indian movies a
year (predominantly telugu movies) but never seen such ugly looking hunch man
of a villain. Considering that in every
second movie the villain has atleast 20-30 hunch man (many of them now acquired
celebrity status like Samba in Sholay), Rohit might have had far better choice
and should kick his casting director in his back and throw him in the air as
one of the many cars he does. The
only saving grace of the movie has been Deepika Padukone, who did a great job,
which might have compelled the producer and director to give her top billing
ahead of Shrakh himself and Nikitin Dheer as Tangabali, who has imposing
personality. Sharukh continues with his adulation with
Rajni Sir and kept people guessing when Rajni Sir will make a grand entry for a
small cameo like in Ra.one (since Sharukh gave a big thanks in the credits to him),
but this time he only used his photos from Robo for end-credit song, which
should thrill the average Tamil movie goer in TN.
The unpardonable thing in the
movie is to try to create humour by the ridiculous way Hindi is spoken (haven’t
the producer realized that there is a over-kill of it already). I started learning Hindi when I was 17
years, but honestly I was never so bad or seen any one so horrible as Deepika
has been depicted saying `thi’ for a
male (no doubt non-hindi speaking people have problem in making out when to use
`tha’ and when `thi’ – like I still don’t now why it is `need lutha hai, chain looti
hai’ in the famous Hindi song `Ek na ek
din kahani banegi’ when both of things of third gender). Banking on such silly things to generate
humour is an exhibition of bankruptcy of ideas and writing skills. Come to think of what our Censor Board and
`Amma’ Jayalalita were doing for such things. I recall that producer of `Aja Nachle’ was
forced to drop `Mochi’ word from a song and producer of `Billu Barbar’ was
forced to drop the word `Barbar’ from the title because a section of people took
offence to it. Some small fringe
Muslim group made the life of Kamal Hassan miserable and our `Amma’ forcefully
stopped the release of Vishwaroopam in TN.
But it appears that she has gone into slumber and not bothered about Tamil
language and Tamilians being so ridiculed since no minority community is involved. This
year there was a Telugu movie `Denikaina Ready’ in which a Muslim boy impersonates
as a Brahmin Pundit who conducts Homam/ Yagnas and the entire movie was nothing
but ridiculing `dhoti wearing pandits’ and no amount of protests by Brahmin
groups could make Government to act and the movie had a smooth sail. Such things do not anger me but I feel pity
that Religion, region, language are ridiculed to generate comedy and the worst
part is that it is done in a crass manner.
How I wish these superstars have the ability or if not the ability but atleast
the capability to imitate `late Mehmood’ whose comedy (including his hyderabadi
dialect) used to be so enjoyable. I can see his Padosan any number of times without being offended a wee bit for his brilliant portrayal of South Indian dance master, which still serves as a bench mark, to such an extent that Amitabh has imitated it in one of the Manmohan Desai Movies and had the humility to admit that he imitated his good old friend Mehmood.
Going by the popularity of
Deepika and Sharukh and with 3500 prints being bombarding the theaters, the
commercial success of the movie is assured and its entry into 100 crores club may be assured, but it doesn’t take away the fact
that it can be counted as one of the worst movies made by Rohit very close to
Bol Bachan. He should take a break
and re-group himself to make straight Hindi movies or go back to his original
roots (of Karnataka) and make South Indian movies (where mindless action movies sell) but for
God’s sake do not make such movies as Chennai Express, which is not less ridiculous
than Sharukh eating noodles with curd in Ra.one. Sharukh should re-think about re-positioning
himself, he cannot carry the `lover boy’ image anymore and he is just not cut
out for action movies, he looks so off-colour in action scenes, more specially
when he pits himself against a 6 footer like Dheer.
S. Prabhakar
11.8.2013
One common thing in the three
unfortunate rape cases that have happened recently in three metro cities, Delhi
(Nirbhay case), Bangalore (Infosys campus) and Mumbai (photo journalist case),
was that in all the three cases the girls were with their male friends and in none
of the three incidents it appears that the macho man have not done much to
protect the young girl with whom they were moving. Either they were tied or got a small bashing
by which they kept quiet and it appears they did not do much to save the girl
before the unfortunate incident or even after the ghastly act was over. 
In the recent Mumbai incident it was
reported that the victim and accompanying male were taken to the nearby railway
station and put in a train.
Understandably the girl must have been great trauma and was not in a position to re-group herself so
soon but what made the male friend not to raise alarm at the station or enroute
and get them arrested and grapple with atleast one or two and pin them
down. If I am not mistaken they were
not in possession of knives or fire arms.
I am more than sure that if these girls were with their old and weak father or
a brother they would have put a far higher degree of resistance to save the
girl.
So my advice to all young girls,
especially those going out late in the evening/night or to seclude places or
parks or abandoned monuments to be conscious of the fact that the boy/male accompanying
you is going to run away or comfortably get pinned down without much resistance
and you need to fend yourself or become pray.
Whatever packs (4, 6 or 8) he must be flexing are cosmetic or steroid
driven, neither he has the guts or macho-ness to put stiff resistance in a bit
to save the girl. It is only in the
reel life that our hero bashes up 10 to 20 goons to save his heroin, but in the
real life, unfortunately, it is a different ball game. 
It is unreasonable to expect the Police to be everywhere, considering our population and short staffed and ill equipped police force. Added to this, police is used less for policing and more for security services for VIP and VVIPs and crowd control for various procession and Dharnaas which take place on a daily basis. But unfortunately they are used as the fall guys whenever such incidents happen. If police try to be pro-active and shoo away young girls and boys from parks and seclude places they are blamed for doing morale policing. Is it possible for the police to appear wherever and whenever you want them. 
Girls should also take stock of
the very unsafe environment in which we 
