Chandni Chowk to China Movie Review

Movie: Chandni Chowk to China
My Rating: 1.5/5
Banner: R S Entertainment, Orion Pictures, Warner Bros
Music: Lot of them
Cinematography: V Manikanandan & Himman Dhamija
Direction: Nikhil Advani
Producers: Ramesh Sippy, Mukesh Talreja & Rohan Sippy
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Ranvir Shorey, Mithun Chakraborty, Gordon Liu & Roger Yuan etc
Release Date: 16th Jan 2009

Review

Story:

Siddhu Sharma (Akshay Kumar) works in an eatery at Chandni Chowk. He is an orphan who gets raised by his Dada (Mithun Chakraborthy). Hojo (Gordon Liu) was a menacing man in the neighboring village of Wall of China. The village men are looking for an incarnation of their war lord. They find Siddhu as the reincarnation of their war hero. Siddhu is looking for an escape from his routine and uninteresting life. He finds this offer of going to China tempting. The local interpreter Chopstick (Ranvir Shorey) helps Siddhu by translating the Chinese language in Hindi. Sakhi (Deepika Padukone) is a model of tele-brand marketing products in India. Meow (Deepika Padukone) is mafia lady working for Hojo. Sakhi and Meow are twins separated at birth. The rest of the story is all about how this cook from Chandni Chowk transforms himself into the warrior who rescues Chinese village from a menace and is also about how the twins have their little family reunion.

Artists Performance:

Akshay Kumar: Akshay Kumar is excellent as a simpleton who transforms himself into a kung-fu expert. He is a superstar who never gives a damn to the image factor. That has been his success mantra in his past films. In this film also there is a scene where the villain urinates on the face of Akshay. He should be appreciated for acting in such a scene. He is pretty good in comedy scenes.

Others: Deepika Padukone is good in both roles she has done. Mithun Chakraborty did the role of guardian of hero. Ranvir Shorey is partly good. Gordon Liu looks menacing as the baddie. Roger Yuan is very entertaining in the scenes of teaching Kung-Fu.

Technical Departments:

Story: Ramesh Sippy produced two classics Sholay and Seeta aur Geeta. Nikhil Advani took these two stories and paid tribute to Ramesh Sippy by mixing these story lines to direct this film on Ramesh Sippy Entertainment banner. Akshay Kumar's character, village set-up and villain character represent the Sholay part of it. Twins part is taken from Seeta aur Geeta. Cook becoming a kung-fu expert is taken from 'Kung-Fu Panda'. 'Believe in yourself' adage is also taken from Kung-Fu-Panda.

Screenplay – Direction: The main drawback of this film is the lack of tone. This film gives a comedy treatment for a serious subject. There by it dilutes the emotions part. There is inconsistency in the tone. Most of the film appears like a comedy and suddenly it becomes a serious episode and then goes back to comedy treatment. The screenplay of the film is bad. Direction is uninteresting. The only scenes that interested me were

1. The comedy bit in flight where Akshay tries to close the overhead locker. (typical Mr. Bean type)
2. The Kung-fu training episodes.

Other Technical Departments: Music of the film is good. Cinematography is nice. Action sequences are well conceived.

Final Analysis: Nikhil Advani fails in two aspects. One is the screenplay. The other one is the setting the tone for the film. A serious treatment to the subject should have achieved the desired results instead of trying to be funny all the time. The plus point of the film is Akshay Kumar. The entire film is boring. It gets little better towards the climax. On a whole, Chandni Chowk to China is a badly made film.