This is a follow up to the previous post ... don't judge a book by it's cover they say ... so true!
The trailer of Chennai Express had become unbearable due to Deepika's fake Tam accent. In the movie you get used to it in no time, because unlike SRK's Tam accent in in Ra.One which had a mind of its own, her accent stays true throughout the movie.
She gets top billing in the credits (even above SRK) and thats the way it should be. She has overshadowed the superstar in practically all scenes that they have together. The one stand-out scene is where she gets possessed by a ghost ... literally kick ass!
SRK is strategically reduced to a cartoon, spoofing himself throughout the movie. But it takes guts to do that and to give his co-star the center stage.
The movie itself is a maybe a shade better than Rohit Shetty's Golmaal series. Nothing much to write about except the full house it drew for a matinee show in Austin. What stays with you after the movie is just DP's performance.
Faith restored! ...
It's a success! More about it, later.
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ReplyDeleteSo to continue my previous comment, Chennai Express was really a success. I agree that it's not a film to rave about but I stepped out of the theatre feeling all excited. A feeling I have rarely got watching Bollywood these days. Raanjhanaa was close but it was too much of a drag in the second half for quite some time before it ended with a flourish. What I liked about Chennai Express other than Deepika Padukone's sincere performance and SRK's caricature of himself was the fact the film's gags actually worked! Shetty's first Golmaal was good but after that he was really going downhill until I watched Bol Bacchhan which had some really good things in its favor. I was getting frustrated with his trying to be another Priyadarshani with those huge supporting casts he had started having but in Chennai Express you can see his confidence in handling just two actors and both have been very well directed. Other than the comedy, there is the macguffin(ashes) which gets disposed off without unnecessary humor and at the right time. There is even a delicacy in their romance which reaches a beautiful moment during the 300 step climbing ritual. Even the action scene's are fairly believable, especially the final fight. I was reminded of SRK's Darr and Anjaam day's looking at him getting all bashed up and scrambling to land an odd punch on the hero. No actor can get beaten up as badly as SRK can. In this film he is the butt of all jokes, kicks and what not. It's perhaps a sporting role but to be frank, it's the only role left for him. He has reduced himself to that. It's high time he did something substantial. He must learn something from his idol Dilip Kumar in that respect. He has wasted his talent. This film is a culmination of all that he has done wrong and perhaps shows a glimmer of how much potential he had as an actor. I am not writing his obituary but as an erstwhile fan who stopped watching his films in theater after 2003 (it was Kal Ho Na Ho), I pity him sometimes. I am sure he will remember this film as the nadir of his career. It is ironic that he has reached it in such a good film.
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The lungi dance was unwanted. There weren't any Southern caricatures until that moment, I felt. Even my Tamil roommate who doesn't understand Hindi enjoyed the film except that dance. I felt the film did very well on it's own to bridge the North-South divide. There was no need for any special appeasement of Rajnikanth. I liked the item number though. It was actually not vulgar! Now,that's a rarity.