Film: Chandni Chowk to China

Banner: R. S. Entertainment, People Tree Films, Warner Bros. Pictures

Director: Nikhil Advani

Producer: Ramesh Sippy, Rohan Sippy, Mukesh Talreja

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Mithun Chakravarthy, Sir Gordon Liu, Ranvir Shorey and Roger Yuan

Rating: 1/5

The hype surrounding Drona was perhaps one tenth of that surrounding CC2C. If you thought Drona was bad, then don’t bother with CC2C because it is a colossal waste of resources, talent, time and money.

Trying to explain the plot is like trying to make a paper boat with no paper. You see moving images on screen but honestly that’s all you see or understand, because beyond that everything else goes for a toss. Chandni Chowk to China is the kind of film where you are bound to walk out frustrated.

Ok now let’s try and make sense of the story, it’s about Sidhu (Akshay Kumar) who is a cook, leading a dreary life in Chandni Chowk. The golden beam of destiny shines on him when his buddy and guru, Chopstick (Ranvir Shorey) lies to him by saying he was once the ruler of an empire in China.

The Chinese believe him to be Lieu Shang, some slain warrior reborn to kill the torturer, Hojo (Gordon Liu). Soon a few punches and fights later, Sidhu learns the truth and when Hojo murders his Dada (Mithun Chakravarthy); its revenge time.

Enter Sakhi (Deepika Padukone) a model, who flies to China in search of her long separated sister. But her sister, Meow Meow (Deepika Padukone in a double role) is a trained assassin working for Hojo. Everything culminates into this masala where everyone meets every one and love, father finding, reunited sisters, martial arts and revenge takes centre stage.

You walk in expecting to be entertained and walk out feeling let down!! CC2C had everything going for it. It boasted of a great star cast, never before seen locations, action, a massive studio backing and despite all this it falls flat. There simply isn’t a story. The dialogues are bad. At places where you ought to be gripped by the actions on screen you want to burst out laughing and at times when it’s meant to be funny, you burst out into tears.

By far the funniest line in the film is something like "Dada mujhey gale lagane aaye the aur unka gala hi kaat diya," At a serious line like this all you want to do is burst out laughing. The problem with this film is the fact that everything seems so contrived and heightened that you never actually manage to get on board the film’s ship.

Everything seems so indulgent without actually falling in place to make this extravagant entertainer. They break out into a song at will, fight at will and crack ludicrous crotch jokes that seriously aren’t funny. There’s one humorous scene once in what seems like ages and that’s all you keep looking forward to.

There is nothing that is consistent in this film, it’s all in extremity. It’s neither visually interesting nor entertaining. Even the dubbing is not perfect and what you hear is not quite what you see.

The characters seem thin, lacking any depth and thus the performances given are also the same. Kumar, the entertainer fails to entertain. Padukone in a double role is twice as dull. She looks great but the excessive crying and the incomprehensible emotions she delivers have us confused.

Chakravarthy as Dada is underutilized and fails to add anything to the film. Shorey is perhaps the only actor in the film who performs fairly well. Gordon Liu is not only underutilized but is also given a role that does him no justice. He commands respect on screen but that’s about it. Yuan as Padukone’s father looks bored.

Evidently a lot of effort has been put into making this film, but having said that, the film just does not entertain. It could collect all the moolaah it wants to, but as a film it’s just sour.