Release date:
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August 9, 2013
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Director:
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Rohit Shetty
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Cast:
Language:
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Deepika Padukone,
Shah Rukh Khan, Sathyaraj, Nikitin
Dheer, Kamini Kaushal, Lekh Tandon, Manorama, Priyamani
Hindi and Tamil
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WARNING:
LONG REVIEW AHEAD!
The first half hour of Chennai
Express is rollicking good fun: the lines are quick-witted, Shah Rukh
Khan’s comic timing is a revelation (didn’t know he had it in him! he should do
more comedies!), Deepika Padukone’s thick Tamilian accent is hilarious (if only
we can relax and not get our knickers in a twist about it) plus we get a neat
little parody of the climactic scene in Dilwale
Dulhania Le Jayenge that deserves, in fact, to be mocked. After that
though, it’s a series of troughs and crests and crests and troughs – in fact,
too many troughs – culminating in an overly long finale fight and the
inexplicable Lungi Dance. Overall
assessment though: if you’re in a mood for some determinedly nonsensical entertainment
that’s not entirely as over-the-top as we’re used to seeing from director Rohit
Shetty, this one’s it.
SRK takes on his favourite screen name once again in Chennai Express in which he plays the
40-year-old grandson of an over-protective North Indian halwai (Lekh Tandon) in Mumbai. When the old man passes away, Rahul
heads off to Goa for a holiday but is diverted to Tamil Nadu’s Komban village when
he gets unwittingly embroiled in the business of Meenamma (Deepika), the beautiful
daughter of a Tamilian don (Sathyaraj). The question many have been asking since
the film’s first trailer was released is this: is Chennai Express a return to the irritating old Bollywood stereotype
of the oily-haired aiyyaiyyo south
Indian epitomised by Mehmood in Padosan
and repeated ad nauseam in Hindi films till the end of the 1980s? The answer,
with a few caveats, is a surprising no. Yes, there’s a pointed contrast made
between the skin colour of the film’s southern Indian lead players and their
emphatically black-skinned flunkeys, but to be fair, Bollywood’s portrayal of north
Indians is not very different, with a lighter skin usually conveying a higher
status. It’s noteworthy though that Chennai
Express sends out a gentle message to north Indians who by and large consider
it every Indian’s duty to speak Hindi while making no effort themselves to
learn other Indian languages. It does so by doggedly not subtitling its lengthy
Tamil dialogues, choosing instead to get translations from Meenamma or a Tamil-speaking
Sikh policeman played sweetly by Mukesh Tiwari, and on other occasions leaving the
audience to guess what’s probably being said.
Most interestingly, SRK spends much of the film in a
self-deprecating mood, being the anti-thesis of the Hindi film hero, openly
showing his fear of the bad guys, with the camerawork intentionally stressing his
smallness in comparison with the towering presence of the villain Thangabali
played by Nikitin Dheer. He gets a drubbing from Thangabali at one point.
Elsewhere, he seeks Meenamma’s protection though of course he won’t admit it. And
in one scene, the lady even gets to kick him real hard for reasons we won’t
reveal. How often does a Hindi film hero do this? Kudos then to Shah Rukh for
risking it, especially considering the prevailing on-screen invincibility of
his arch rival Salman Khan who remains capable of taking on crowds, trains and
trams with his bare fists. Rahul even – hold your breath! – announces his age
as 40 in the very first line he utters in the film, and Meenamma tells him he
looks 50-plus. Considering that at 47-going-on-48 SRK played a 25-year-old boy
in the first half of last year’s Jab Tak Hai Jaan, this comes as a relief. Gentlemen of Bollywood, when you star in
a film with a heroine half your age, kindly admit that it’s an
older-man-younger-woman romance.
The other significant point is Chennai Express’ take on DDLJ,
the film that catapulted SRK from stardom to stratospheric megastardom. DDLJ romanticised its regressive message
about the unquestionable will of the family patriarch and a woman’s lack of say
in personal matters. Twenty years later, SRK returns as another Rahul, this
time not to succumb but to question a father for being despotic with his
daughter. The men are still the ones doing the talking, but the nature of the
conversation has changed, and that’s a small milestone to celebrate.
If the preceding paragraph suggests in any way that
Meenamma is a pushover or Deepika’s role is subordinate to Shah Rukh’s in this
film, you’ve read that wrong. Meenamma is a woman who strains at her chains every
step of the way. And Deepika sustains her comic timing from start to finish in Chennai Express even when SRK’s Rahul
gets repetitive in the second half. After the emotional roller-coaster she
pulled off in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani,
here’s another thumbs up for Ms Padukone, this time in a vastly different role.
SRK lives up to his promise – made in a beverage ad – that from this film forward
his heroine’s name would appear before his in the credits, which as we all know
is a break from MCP Bollywood’s norm. Now that’s a condescending piece of tosh
if your heroine is playing fifth fiddle to you as is the case with most Hindi
films (and certainly Rohit Shetty’s own last two, Bol Bachchan and Singham),
but in Chennai Express Deepika is an
equal partner to her hero, as she has been in most of her films so far.
Hopefully a day is not far when a leading lady does not have to depend on a
leading man’s largesse to have her name placed in the credits where it should
rightfully be. Until then, here’s another small milestone to celebrate.
It’s
because of how Chennai Express
chooses to portray south Indians and its heroine until that point that the Lungi Dance in the end is so jarring.
First, it relegates Deepika completely to the position of junior partner when
it starts off with the announcement, “This is the tribute to Thalaivar from King Khan…” Second, the
so-called “tribute” to Rajinikanth continues to reduce this Tamil film icon to
mere exotica, which is how North India has deigned to recognise him ever since
the North India-centric, supposedly “national” media accidentally woke up to
his legend status with the release of Sivaji.
As a comical song-and-dance somewhere in the middle of this film, Lungi Dance might have been enjoyable. Placed
at the end with the credits, with absolutely no connection to anything that’s
gone before, and positioned as a bow to Rajini, it’s reductive and makes
absolutely no sense. Though some people north of the Vindhyas may find this
hard to believe, there’s ACTUALLY more to Rajinikanth than his sunglass-flipping
and other stunts.
Clearly
then, Chennai Express is not an
entirely smooth ride. Never mind the ideological analysis… Purely from an
entertainment point of view, the film slows down too much in the second half. Some
things remain consistent though: DoP Dudley does a good job of capturing the film’s
uniformly picturesque locations; production designer Narendra Rahurikar creates
prettiness without colour coordinating wall paint with the clothes worn by
people standing against those walls as we’ve seen in too many films of the past
decade; and the costume design team clothes Deepika in the loveliest southern
Indian saris and half-saris while dressing the rest of the cast impeccably too,
sans the loudness we’ve come to associate with Rohit Shetty’s films. The music,
on the other hand, is mostly lousy – except for the extremely catchy Chennaiaiaiaiai Chennai Express theme
and the reasonably melodic Titli,
This comes as a huge disappointment considering Vishal-Shekhar’s amazing track
record. National Award-winning Tamil and Malayalam actress Priyamani looks
lovely in her item song appearance but must bear the brunt of the tunelessness
of the number to which she is dancing. South India knows her well; Bollywood
saw the impact she makes even in a supporting role when she played Abhishek
Bachchan’s sister in Raavan… for god’s
sake, she deserves better than this.
When
you weigh out the film’s assets and liabilities though, there’s more to like
than not. Too many Bollywood comedies in recent years have come laden with
“jokes” about rape, faeces and farts, urine and sundry body fluids. Chennai Express steers clear of
crudeness except for a couple of un-funny comments about izzat lootna, one tacky wisecrack about “chhakkaas” and a few-seconds-long distasteful reference to Shah
Rukh’s most sensitive film so far (“My name is Rahul and I’m not a terrorist,”
says the hero here, rolling his eyes as if autism is amusing). Chennai Express is partly designed as a
bow to SRK (I lost count of the number of times in the film he stretches out
his arms in that trademark gesture) but in a fashion that’s less in-your-face
than the grating Salman-worship we’ve lately been seeing in the other Khan’s films.
One
thing’s for sure: this film is not as mindless as it would like us to think it
is. Anyway, kee farak painda? For as
Meenamma might say in that infectious accent of hers, “Main ab review khatam karti, tum review padhti, phir tum film dekhti aur
khud decide karti ki tum film like karti ya hate karti.” Chennai Express is not unrelentingly
laugh-worthy, but it’s still good enough for a relaxed, pleasant evening. Happy
Eid, folks!
Rating (out of five): **3/4
CBFC Rating (India):
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U/A
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Running time:
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2 hours 23 minutes
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