Friday, January 23, 2009
CC2C
Chandni Chowk to China
The intention was right—get Hollywood (Warner) clout to back an Indian masala-meets-Chinese-kung fu spectacle and conquer the world. Maybe because they aimed too high, the fall was equally hard.
A film like Chandni Chowk to China, inspired by the illogical seventies’ style commercial cinema (the kind Manmohan Desai patented), needs a sense of childish abandon, total conviction in its silliness and a don’t-let-them-think pace, which Nikhil Advani simply cannot accomplish. As a result of which the Chinese martial arts portions of the film (like a live-action Kung Fu Panda) work much better that the Bollywood melodrama.
Sidhu (Akshay Kumar), a simple-minded Chandni Chowk cook’s assistant, keeps making the rounds of astrologers and quacks to get rich quick, and getting kicked around (so hard that he flies across the city) by his foster father (Mithun Chakraborty).
Thanks to the deliberate misinterpretation by his Chinese friend Chopstick (Ranvir Shorey), Sidhu is taken to be the reincarnation of legendary warrior Liu Shen and taken to China by two desperate men, who need him to fight the villain Hojo (Gordon Liu), who is oppressing their village.
The villain is a bald, grinning monster, who decapitates people with his bowler hat and goes around with an albino sidekick. Years ago he had tossed a cop Chiang (Roger Yuan) from the Great Wall, as a result of which he lost his memory and was separated from his wife and twin daughters. One of them, Sakhi (Deepika Padukone—bright and beautiful) now lands up in China too, and keeps narrowly missing her twin Meow Meow, who works for Hojo.
All that is well, and very old-style Bollywood, but what is one to make of a film in which the hero worships a potato, just shed tears most of the time, is beaten, spat and pissed upon by the villain, and wails over the death of his Dada, dispatched with the bowler hat.
Too late in the film, he runs into Chiang, the old cop regains his memory and teaches Sidhu kung fu, so that he can finally fight Hojo and his army. Through all this mayhem on and around the Great Wall (the first time a film was allowed to shoot there), the Chinese authorities are blissfully asleep. The film sputters to life when Sidhu trains, but the long-awaited climax is a let down.
There is a lot of weeping and sermonizing, not enough light-hearted fun in CC2C, and even when you are willing to put up with non-stop nonsense—since the promos promised that-- you are hardly ever amused. The script puts in needless complications and many plodding sequences (like one at the opera); instead of pace and humour, you get Akshay Kumar’s tomfoolery of the kind that he overdid in Singh In Kinng plus some cringe-worthy gags and lines.
Maybe the Chinese know something Mumbai filmmakers don’t…so they have a better hit rate in crossover cinema. Advani tries so hard that the strain shows, like the veins standing out on his hero’s forehead. And then there’s the added embarrassment of the film giving the impression abroad (going by the many reviews) that this is what Indian cinema has to offer the world.
The intention was right—get Hollywood (Warner) clout to back an Indian masala-meets-Chinese-kung fu spectacle and conquer the world. Maybe because they aimed too high, the fall was equally hard.
A film like Chandni Chowk to China, inspired by the illogical seventies’ style commercial cinema (the kind Manmohan Desai patented), needs a sense of childish abandon, total conviction in its silliness and a don’t-let-them-think pace, which Nikhil Advani simply cannot accomplish. As a result of which the Chinese martial arts portions of the film (like a live-action Kung Fu Panda) work much better that the Bollywood melodrama.
Sidhu (Akshay Kumar), a simple-minded Chandni Chowk cook’s assistant, keeps making the rounds of astrologers and quacks to get rich quick, and getting kicked around (so hard that he flies across the city) by his foster father (Mithun Chakraborty).
Thanks to the deliberate misinterpretation by his Chinese friend Chopstick (Ranvir Shorey), Sidhu is taken to be the reincarnation of legendary warrior Liu Shen and taken to China by two desperate men, who need him to fight the villain Hojo (Gordon Liu), who is oppressing their village.
The villain is a bald, grinning monster, who decapitates people with his bowler hat and goes around with an albino sidekick. Years ago he had tossed a cop Chiang (Roger Yuan) from the Great Wall, as a result of which he lost his memory and was separated from his wife and twin daughters. One of them, Sakhi (Deepika Padukone—bright and beautiful) now lands up in China too, and keeps narrowly missing her twin Meow Meow, who works for Hojo.
All that is well, and very old-style Bollywood, but what is one to make of a film in which the hero worships a potato, just shed tears most of the time, is beaten, spat and pissed upon by the villain, and wails over the death of his Dada, dispatched with the bowler hat.
Too late in the film, he runs into Chiang, the old cop regains his memory and teaches Sidhu kung fu, so that he can finally fight Hojo and his army. Through all this mayhem on and around the Great Wall (the first time a film was allowed to shoot there), the Chinese authorities are blissfully asleep. The film sputters to life when Sidhu trains, but the long-awaited climax is a let down.
There is a lot of weeping and sermonizing, not enough light-hearted fun in CC2C, and even when you are willing to put up with non-stop nonsense—since the promos promised that-- you are hardly ever amused. The script puts in needless complications and many plodding sequences (like one at the opera); instead of pace and humour, you get Akshay Kumar’s tomfoolery of the kind that he overdid in Singh In Kinng plus some cringe-worthy gags and lines.
Maybe the Chinese know something Mumbai filmmakers don’t…so they have a better hit rate in crossover cinema. Advani tries so hard that the strain shows, like the veins standing out on his hero’s forehead. And then there’s the added embarrassment of the film giving the impression abroad (going by the many reviews) that this is what Indian cinema has to offer the world.
Labels: Cinemaah
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