Chennai Express (2013) – Derailed

Chennai Express for most of its length appears to be a badly done spoof of ‘DDLJ’ and is probably only matched by ‘Guddu’ for Shah Rukh’s worst performances till date. I have never been fond of Rohit Shetty’s brand of slapstick comedy or gravity defying henchmen flying stunts but this one was particularly unbearable by its lack of any wisdom at all.

Having wasted 2 hours and 20 minutes of my evening and about 20$ on the ticket money I definitely will not waste any more of my time and effort in writing a detailed review about the movie. However, if anyone reading this post still wants to go and watch this movie, I would really like to compare my notes on the following few questions that came to my mind as I watched the “Chhhhennnai AekssPressss” run wildly through several Bollywood formulas one after the other (and I am not even questioning the hero taking on a herd of goons and likewise).

1. How come the son of a ‘Halwai’ is still unmarried at 40 years old? – Because the director felt that if he was married with 2 biological children and a surrogate son crying for his attention in the movie, he couldn’t have justified all the cheesy lines about how he wants to live his life and pursue his dreams….(seriously what was he doing the entire two decades from his 20s to 40s??)
   
   
   
2. Why would anyone want their ashes dispersed in two different places miles apart? – Come on, how else would you make our Hero take the train where he meets the heroine? Unless of course, someone hired an actual script writer to create a more believable situation to do that.
   
   
   
3. Why would 4 hardcore goons, who showed no hesitation in throwing a TC out of a moving train, want to carry a hostage all the way to their village when they could have just done away with our ‘Halwai da puttar’ in train itself? – Because he was the sole witness to a murder that actually did not happen coz in the very next shot the TC is seen coming out of the water (one hell of a swimmer perhaps). But again the goons did not let SRK go because well, he paid for their salaries. You can’t argue that with a star who is also the producer of the movie on that now, can you? 
   
   
   
4. DP bears a strong accent throughout with broken Hindi and unforgivable grammar, yet when she is running through a song, the dialect and the accent suddenly disappears only to appear 3 minutes later. How? – I guess this must be because of her weird ailment which makes her act like a loony witch and kick people in sleep.
   
   
   
5. Why is SRK acting like he got himself hit in the head while watching a Jim Carrey movie and can’t decide which part of his brain controls the muscles on his face? Seriously, what character sketch was the director thinking when he made the superstar twitch, turn, squirm, giggle and go groggy in almost every frame of the movie? – The only reason I can think of is SRK going through some sort of ‘Man-o-pause’ and suffering from mid age crisis. A 40 year old acting like that should be in solitary confinement and not let loose upon unsuspecting audience.
   
   
   
6. How come the ‘Heroine ka baap’ gets to mouth only one line in the climax – “You win. The girl is yours”? Considering this is right after where SRK mouths something about 66 years of independence and the women folk still struggling to live the way they want, it made me really lose all hope for the movie. Not even at par with DDLJ’s silly sounding ‘Jaa beti, jee le apni zindagi” this guy just handed out her daughter like she was a trophy he had procured from some second hand goods market and surprisingly no one batted an eyelid except for a couple of Kanjivaram clad aunties in the background who nearly jumped to joy and were moved to tears on hearing that they were finally getting rid of their dearest ‘Meena Lochini’.
   
   
   
7. Which state in India has the villagers generous enough to bestow an entire mansion to a couple on the run (no background checks, nothing, simple nods suffice) and even hand out a Mahindra jeep with nice alloys with no possible guarantees on return? – Certainly not the village where farmers committed suicide for lack of means to irrigate their farms or where they have to drive their cattle to community sheds to save their livestock from dying due to lack of fodder.
   
   
   
8. I am willing to concede that there might still exist places in India where Hindi has not made inroads as the official national language. But honestly, an entire village where no one understands Hindi is still a tough pill to swallow. But the real question is, how come all of a sudden in the climax SRK gets to mouth complicated lines in Tamil? Perhaps he got hold of a copy of the book below.

PS: Don’t even get me started on discussing the power of a common man.