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