akshay shah

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A lot of expectations were riding on CHANDNI CHOWK TO CHINA. Apart from having Akshay Kumar and Deepika Padukone in the cast, the film was produced by Ramesh Sippy and Rohan Sippy and the cherry on top was Warner Bros making its first foray in to Indian cinema. And those expectations came crashing down early 09 when the movie bombed at the box-office.

On paper the movie sounded like a Indian “khichdi” of old-school masala cinema merged in with Asian martial arts and a dash of SHOLAY, the end outcome was indeed an old-school masala, however, of the kind which is clearly past its use by date.
The plot is overtly simple, a Chinese village, suffering from a tyrant Hojo (Gordon Liu), finds out that they can be freed only by an ancient warrior Liu Sheung. Liu Sheung has been reborn in India as Sidhu (Akshay Kumar). How Sidhu becomes Liu Sheung and saves the villagers forms the crux of the story. Simple? Yes, very much so, in fact, so simple that the writers have forced in every cliché in the book as well as an abundance of comedy to make this one work. Sadly, this doesn’t come off!
Shridhar Raghavan seems to be a case of “hit and miss”. In some cases he gets the writing spot-on and it translates perfectly to celluloid like KHAKEE, APAHARAN and BLUFFMASTER, while in others it falls flat on its face like with DEEWARR –LET’S BRING OUR HEROES HOME, FAMILY and now CHANNDI CHOWK TO CHINA. The problem here is that the movie had the potential to be a real throwback film which was campy, funny, action-packed juxtaposed with romance and drama, in essence, all the trappings of a perfect “masala” film. However, CHANDNI CHOWK TO CHINA tries to borrow from everything including SHOLAY, MR.NATWARLAL, and GOLDFINGER to the old-school martial arts films; however, ultimately nothing holds together.

Director Nikhil Advani was probably relying on Akshay Kumar and the comedy to see the movie through, and while both are fantastic, the expectations from this was much more than your usual Akshay Kumar comedy ala SINGH IS KINNG and WELCOME. Advani’s main problem is that there is no real focus to start with and he relies too strongly on the clichés themselves to do the work, rather than trying to re-work the clichés in to something much more interesting. In recent times films like JAAN-E-MANN, TASHAN, JHOOM BARABAR JHOOM have tried to achieve similar results, however with these films, it was clear from the outset they will be tongue-in-cheek and on some level paying an homage. With TASHAN, the bits that worked were the homages, and the bits that didn’t was the actual genuine “masala” (i.e. the climax). Like GHAJINI, this tries to be an outright “masala” movie which fails to engage the viewer at all, primarily because it doesn’t take itself seriously and in turn, the audience doesn’t know that they should take the movie seriously.

However, not all is lost, like always, Akshay is the sole reason to watch the film as he infuses life in to yet another comic role with panache. His timing is bang-on-the-money as always, his screen presence is immense, and his action sequences are clap-worthy, however in this instance, it’s just not enough. By the time the second half comes around, the movie is a wild circus with no ringmaster.

Deepika Padukone is good in her part which doesn’t require her to act much. She fits in to her double role well and looks stunning throughout.

Gordon Liu fails to evoke the fear of legendary villains. Ranvir Shourie is wasted. Mithun too hasn’t been utilized properly.

Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s music is catchy and royally picturized though, at times stands out like a sore thumb.

CHANDNI CHOWK TO CHINA is a let down as expectations were way higher for this film, and despite an energetic performance by Akshay, this one fails to grasp the viewer’s attention.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGxhBnp5W5s&hl=en&fs=1&]

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