Chandni Chowk to China (2008) movie wallpapers :
Chandni Chowk to China (2008) Movie Rating and Review :
Rating :
Acting – 6.5/10
Direction – 2.5/10
Screenplay – 2.5/10
Music – 5/10
Technique – 6/10
Review :
Kung fu thanda
Despite Akshay Kumar’s best efforts, CC2C is 160 minutes not well spent
The foreigners make Chicken Tikka better than we do these days. Whether it’s Boyle-ing in Britain or Baz-ing Down Under, they have got hold of the secret Bollywood recipe and are dishing out their own lip-smacking baltis. All we are left with is dum aloo! That’s what the harrowing and hackneyed horror show called Chandni Chowk to China will make you believe.
Sony Pictures started off their India campaign with the pretentious and self-indulgent Saawariya. They haven’t made a Bollywood move since. And Chandni Chowk to China could well ensure that Warner Bros stays away from Hindi films for quite some time. Though for entirely different reasons.
While Saawariya went the arthouse way, CC2C tries to celebrate the best of Bollywood kitsch. Twins separated at birth, mistaken identities, baby found in a basket, avenging family murder, songs seen in dreams… it has every possible plot point that Nasir Hussain and Manmohan Desai ever used. Clearly the attempt here is to give the world — it’s the widest ever release in the US with 125 screens — the taste of the original Bollywood masala.
But Nikhil Advani is no Farah Khan. What could have been a sumptuous homage to the best Hindi films of yore turns out to be an insipid and wishy-washy goulash of clichéd hooks. In fact, the scripting by Sridhar Raghavan, who wrote the intelligent Bluffmaster!, is so random that sometimes you are not sure you are watching one movie.
Ok, let’s try the impossible task of putting together parts of this jigsaw puzzle. A Chinese village lives in terror. Why? A smuggler named Hojo (Gordon Liu) spins his bowler hat like the sudarshan chakra to behead villagers! Prayers to Buddha lead a couple of villagers to India in search of a reincarnated kung fu warrior who had once fought for the peasants. Why? Buddha was born in India, silly!
Sidhu (Akshay) the Chandni Chowk vegetable cutter believes his destiny lies in China. Why? His feng shastra (feng shui meets vastu shastra) guruji Chopstick (Ranvir) cons both the villagers and him! Sidhu’s Dada (Mithun), who’s brought up the orphan, doesn’t want him to go but he has made up his mind. Why? ‘Aloo mein ganesh’ — the curves on the potato he was cutting makes it look like the elephant god! He bumps into a model Sakhi (Deepika) at the Chinese consulate who makes him dance. Why? She appears in the advertisement of a machine called Dancemaster G9!
And that’s just Chandni Chowk. Once the action shifts to China — even though they shoot mostly in Bangkok (you can’t miss the airport) — the madness multiplies many times over. There’s another Deepika with glued eyelashes and there’s Deepika’s dad who is now a Bhikhari Baba with Ghajini memory loss. Then there’s an umbrella which works like a parachute and an ear aid which can translate languages. See, random is not necessarily bad. The Coen Brothers are masters of arbitrariness but the loopiness is all worked into the plot. Advani obviously bites off more than he can chew and just like in Salaam-e-Ishq, the tumbleweed goes tumbling on and on. You cannot make Kung Fu Panda and Kung Fu Hustle in one film and sell it as Akshay Kumar’s biography.
You can be smart but everyone’s not a fool. For all those of you who have fixed your weekend plex date with CC2C, well, here’s what you can actually look forward to. It’s nothing new for him but it bears repetition — Akshay, yet again, is the best thing about a bad film. Unlike in Singh is Kinng, he is consistently funny throughout. Watch him in the scene where he dances back-to-back to Bollywood’s evergreen chartbusters or the one where he jumps out at the mention of Chura ke dil mera — “Is gaane ka master toh main hoon.”
In full-on action mode after a long time, Akshay’s kung fu training sequence, punctuated with Kailash Kher’s vocals, is the high point of the film. Deepika does what she is best at — looking good and doing little else.
But it must be underlined that she looks stunning, whether as Rampuri Chaku or nanchaku. The music is good, with the title track (Shankar Ehsaan Loy) and Sidhu (Kailash Kher) being the highlights; but Bappida’s modified India se aaya mera dost jars.
The cinematography by Himman Dhamija lives up to the Warner Bros tag. But the real pay-offs? Mithunda popping up in the action sequence and announcing in Gunmaster G9 style: “Aye burbak, bees haathon ka sahara lekar khud ko teesmarka samajhta hai?” before landing a couple of legendary punches. And, of course, Gordon Liu, the kung fu icon who first took us through the 36 Chambers of Shaolin and then played Pai Mei in Kill Bill, the man with the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, flying in thin air for a Bollywood movie.
Those are really the few redeeming factors for the genre fanboys. Otherwise Chandni Chowk to China is a journey that is not worth 160 minutes of your lives. It’s also high time the Khans and the Kumar realise that there’s no glory using your star power to fanatically market bad movies and make crores over the first three days.
Did you like or not like Chandni Chowk to China?
Acting – 6.5/10
Direction – 2.5/10
Screenplay – 2.5/10
Music – 5/10
Technique – 6/10
Review :
Kung fu thanda
Despite Akshay Kumar’s best efforts, CC2C is 160 minutes not well spent
The foreigners make Chicken Tikka better than we do these days. Whether it’s Boyle-ing in Britain or Baz-ing Down Under, they have got hold of the secret Bollywood recipe and are dishing out their own lip-smacking baltis. All we are left with is dum aloo! That’s what the harrowing and hackneyed horror show called Chandni Chowk to China will make you believe.
Sony Pictures started off their India campaign with the pretentious and self-indulgent Saawariya. They haven’t made a Bollywood move since. And Chandni Chowk to China could well ensure that Warner Bros stays away from Hindi films for quite some time. Though for entirely different reasons.
While Saawariya went the arthouse way, CC2C tries to celebrate the best of Bollywood kitsch. Twins separated at birth, mistaken identities, baby found in a basket, avenging family murder, songs seen in dreams… it has every possible plot point that Nasir Hussain and Manmohan Desai ever used. Clearly the attempt here is to give the world — it’s the widest ever release in the US with 125 screens — the taste of the original Bollywood masala.
But Nikhil Advani is no Farah Khan. What could have been a sumptuous homage to the best Hindi films of yore turns out to be an insipid and wishy-washy goulash of clichéd hooks. In fact, the scripting by Sridhar Raghavan, who wrote the intelligent Bluffmaster!, is so random that sometimes you are not sure you are watching one movie.
Ok, let’s try the impossible task of putting together parts of this jigsaw puzzle. A Chinese village lives in terror. Why? A smuggler named Hojo (Gordon Liu) spins his bowler hat like the sudarshan chakra to behead villagers! Prayers to Buddha lead a couple of villagers to India in search of a reincarnated kung fu warrior who had once fought for the peasants. Why? Buddha was born in India, silly!
Sidhu (Akshay) the Chandni Chowk vegetable cutter believes his destiny lies in China. Why? His feng shastra (feng shui meets vastu shastra) guruji Chopstick (Ranvir) cons both the villagers and him! Sidhu’s Dada (Mithun), who’s brought up the orphan, doesn’t want him to go but he has made up his mind. Why? ‘Aloo mein ganesh’ — the curves on the potato he was cutting makes it look like the elephant god! He bumps into a model Sakhi (Deepika) at the Chinese consulate who makes him dance. Why? She appears in the advertisement of a machine called Dancemaster G9!
And that’s just Chandni Chowk. Once the action shifts to China — even though they shoot mostly in Bangkok (you can’t miss the airport) — the madness multiplies many times over. There’s another Deepika with glued eyelashes and there’s Deepika’s dad who is now a Bhikhari Baba with Ghajini memory loss. Then there’s an umbrella which works like a parachute and an ear aid which can translate languages. See, random is not necessarily bad. The Coen Brothers are masters of arbitrariness but the loopiness is all worked into the plot. Advani obviously bites off more than he can chew and just like in Salaam-e-Ishq, the tumbleweed goes tumbling on and on. You cannot make Kung Fu Panda and Kung Fu Hustle in one film and sell it as Akshay Kumar’s biography.
You can be smart but everyone’s not a fool. For all those of you who have fixed your weekend plex date with CC2C, well, here’s what you can actually look forward to. It’s nothing new for him but it bears repetition — Akshay, yet again, is the best thing about a bad film. Unlike in Singh is Kinng, he is consistently funny throughout. Watch him in the scene where he dances back-to-back to Bollywood’s evergreen chartbusters or the one where he jumps out at the mention of Chura ke dil mera — “Is gaane ka master toh main hoon.”
In full-on action mode after a long time, Akshay’s kung fu training sequence, punctuated with Kailash Kher’s vocals, is the high point of the film. Deepika does what she is best at — looking good and doing little else.
But it must be underlined that she looks stunning, whether as Rampuri Chaku or nanchaku. The music is good, with the title track (Shankar Ehsaan Loy) and Sidhu (Kailash Kher) being the highlights; but Bappida’s modified India se aaya mera dost jars.
The cinematography by Himman Dhamija lives up to the Warner Bros tag. But the real pay-offs? Mithunda popping up in the action sequence and announcing in Gunmaster G9 style: “Aye burbak, bees haathon ka sahara lekar khud ko teesmarka samajhta hai?” before landing a couple of legendary punches. And, of course, Gordon Liu, the kung fu icon who first took us through the 36 Chambers of Shaolin and then played Pai Mei in Kill Bill, the man with the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, flying in thin air for a Bollywood movie.
Those are really the few redeeming factors for the genre fanboys. Otherwise Chandni Chowk to China is a journey that is not worth 160 minutes of your lives. It’s also high time the Khans and the Kumar realise that there’s no glory using your star power to fanatically market bad movies and make crores over the first three days.
Did you like or not like Chandni Chowk to China?
No comments:
Post a Comment