Chandni Chowk to China
Director: Nikkhil Advani
Year: 2009
Music: Shankar-Loy-Ehsaan
Duration: 154 minutes
Rating: 5.0
Back in 2005 Jackie Chan took HK films to India in The Myth and with this
film Ashok Kumar returns the favor by bringing Bollywood to China. Though
I am not sure if "favor" is the correct word in this case considering how
malformed this film is. Ashok Kumar is a huge star in India and has made his
share of action films as well as comedies and romances - but I doubt if he
has had to play a complete simpering idiot for 90% of a film as he does here.
Irritatingly so. Obnoxiously so. Audiences tune into Kumar films to see him
as the unstoppable implacable hero who gets the girl and gives them a few
laughs along the way - not to whimper and cower for much of the film. This
is your typical zero to hero film, but the zero section went on far too long
and the conversion to Hero is silly beyond belief.
Kumar plays Sidhu, a not very bright loser who sells and chops vegetables
in the Old Delhi section called Chandni Chowk and keeps screwing up in every
way possible. He thinks his luck is going to change when he sees the image
of the Indian deity Ganesh on a potato. And it does - to worse. Two Chinese
men come looking for the reincarnation of Liu Sheng, a great kung fu warrior,
in order to free their village from a villainous overlord. For some reason
they think Sidhu is their man and Sidhu's "friend" who speaks Chinese tells
him they want him to come to their village to celebrate. What a great opportunity
he thinks.
The twin sisters separated at birth angle that has littered Bollywood films
going way back like garbage on a New Jersey beach is brought out of the mothballs
once again. But considering that the wondrous Deepika Padukone appears in
this double role, you will get no complaint out of me. In truth, I picked
this film out because of her after watching her last week in Happy New Year.
She rocks. A great dancer who was a top badminton player as a teenager who
went on to be a model. In this film, her parents were a Chinese man and an
Indian woman - but when her characters were only a few months old one of them
was stolen by Hojo - coincidentally the villain in the village - while the
other one is brought back to grow up in India.
But it all collides as things do in Bollywood films when Sidu goes to China
as does Shaki (Deepika) and they come across Meow-Meow (Deepika) who has been
trained as a kung fu killer and like every twin film known to man, they get
mixed up for one another. There is a fair amount of action which to say is
exaggerated would be an understatement as punches literally send people into
the next town or 30 feet into the air. Some of that is supposed to be comedic
but it is just tedious and unnecessary. On the plus side Hojo, who has a
hat that slices and dices like Oddjob did in Goldfinger, is played by Gordon
Liu Chia-hui, a legend from the Shaw Brothers films. He gets a lot of screen
time, gets some action in (very wire enhanced) and is very good at being
very bad. He and Deepika made the film bearable though to be fair there are
actually a few fairly amusing routines that had me laughing. Still overall
this is much too idiotic for most people who are not in a coma. Not me necessarily
as long as there is a pretty girl in there. Perhaps that is how Bollywood
should rate their films - by levels of seriousness to silliness.