By the time I went to watch ‘Chennai Express’ the film had
crossed 100 crore mark. The first film ever to do so in the very first weekend
of release. The mainstream papers like TOI and HT had given it thumbs up with
more than 3 stars each. From my friends and general public I received mixed
reviews. There is one statement, becoming pretty popular now, which always surprises
me : ‘Leave your brains behind and you will enjoy the film!’
Leave my brains ? Where
?
I decided to take my wife and brains along with me for the
movie. I booked my tickets at 1 PM on 5th day of the release of this
mega hit for the 6 PM show. I got the best seats as the seat chart showed that
only 7 tickets had been booked so far for the show. This seemed surprising for
a big hit.
The movie has a promising start. It gives you a fair idea
that it is going to be a comedy. This is
a welcome sign as one hasn't seen a good comedy in a long while. Then you get
another promising hint. The movie is using one of my favourite hindi movies ‘Dil
Waale Dulhaniya……’ as an inspiration. I realize I had done a good thing by
getting my brains along. This was going to be fun for heart and brain and body!
The Dadaji of ‘Rahul’
in the film as domineering old man and as a Sachin Tendulkar fan is projected with aplomb. He controls
everything about our hero till he is alive. Kamini Kaushal endears as a classy
Dadiji. Dadaji’s death would set our hero free from ‘mithaiwala’ tag and he
would go on his journey to find his way and identity in life. The first
destination would be Goa. His granny tells him to go to Rameshwaram to immerse
his dadaji’s ashes and he boards ‘Chennai express’ to make a fool of her as he intends to get off the train soon and go
off to Goa to be with friends and ‘chicks.’ This holds a lot of promise.
Our heroine Deepika is lifted off the platform on to the
train a la ‘Dulhaniya’ style by our hero. Then came 4 south Indian toughies who are also
lifted on to the ‘Chennai Express.’ These toughies were actually villains who
were running after our heroine to take her back to her village to her ‘don’
father. Our hero has inadvertently helped them into getting on to the train and
now she and he are both their captives. This was going to be fun.
Then our hero SRK comes into form. He takes over the movie
and starts what he is most infamous for : Hamming. He hams and makes faces and
tries to be funny. Audiences laugh when his Rs 34200 phone is thrown off the
train. Audiences laugh when the ticket checker is thrown off the train. A lot
of ‘so called’ funny things start happening. My smile vanishes. Please do
remember that I had not left my brains behind. I remain wooden for next 2
hours. Devicka (my wife also got her brains along with her). She looks at me accusingly every few minutes.
Then she yawns. Then she gets busy sending Emails on her phone.
The movie falls into a predictable pattern. I could sense
what was coming next. Most of the time I was right. My guess is that when Rohit
Shetty and SRK got together, they decided to make a film with a loose script
without any detailing. Some ideas must have floated around. They must have decided to write the screenplay as the
movie progressed. They must have decided to adopt following strategies :
Strategy 1 : Try
to make most of the scenes funny by weird behavior of the cast and their facial
expressions. Audience will laugh when the heroine behaves weirdly in middle of
night and kicks the hero out of the bed. The audience will love it when a dwarf
is introduced for no reason and keeps clicking his tongue as a method of
talking. The audience will have a stomach ache laughing when the hero making
funny faces would challenge the toughies double his size and then run away. The
audience will get hysterical when out of the blue the hero will reach Sri
Lankan waters and then continue his weird behavior. The audiences will adore
the lead pair when they keep running from each other and end up meeting again
and again.
Strategy 2 : Try
to put in some emotional scenes. Examples :The touching talk by Kamini Kaushal
about immersion of ashes; the touching talk by Deepika Padukone about immersion
of ashes; the touching scene of the
heroine getting the ashes in the midst of danger to life and; the touching scene
of immersion of ashes. (Please remember the movie is not about a train but
about ashes of Dadaji).
Strategy 3 : Romance.
Unfortunately one can only see some romance in the imagination songs and in the
eyes of the heroine once the hero climbs with her in his arms up the 300 steps to a temple. Devicka suddenly takes interest in the movie. She likes the Saree the
heroine is wearing in the scene. Now that the hero has picked the heroine and climbed up all those steps - then onward heroine has hearts in her eyes
but hero is too busy hamming to notice all this.
Strategy 4 : Dilwale
Dulhaniya in the beginning and Dilwale Dulahaniya at the end. What a sad tribute to that great film. The long lecture
to his ‘to be father in law’ goes quite a waste as the ‘dad’ does not even help
him when he is getting bashed up.Our hero almost gets killed but 'father in law' does not help at all. We keep waiting for the ‘don’ to come to the
rescue of our hero but that never happens. Must be thinking his ‘son in law to
be’ a big joker who was trying to talk to him in a language he had no clue
about. Can you imagine our hero refused the help of interpreter also ! Amrish
Puri had more emotions in ‘Dilwale’ because he could understand what hero was
saying and he was also a better actor.
Strategy 5: Intersperse
all this with a few high quality action scenes and car chases, car crashes and in the end
show that there is life after death. Life after death ? Well our ‘halwai’ hero
from Mumbai must have learnt to fight like this in the last ‘janam’ and luckily everything
fell into place once he was attacked by armed army of men – each one weighing
100 KG’s more than him. His training of last janam suddenly comes handy. He rose from the ashes to destroy the evil to embrace
his lady love and also made a statement on national integration.
The duo of Rohit Shetty and SRK must have promised the
producers (UTV) that they would make a
great hit and earn them a lot of money. Producers must have been asked to do a blitzkrieg
of promotions and ensure that no other
film in India’s history would have had so many screenings in the first 3 days.
The 100 crore turnover in 3 days is the proof of a successful marketing
strategy. SRK is an expert on this after his RaOne experience where he sold his
rubbish to the gullible audiences in the first few days. I was lucky with that
one as I didn’t go and watch it. But a little bird had told me that RaOne made
distributors lose big money. Amul has come out with this great ad which tells
the story about Chennai express :
The stunning aspect of Chennai Express was the
cinematography. From the time the train leaves Mumbai, you have stunning shots
of the bridges, waterfalls and south Indian landscapes. The photography and
locations are really out of this world. This aspect is the only thing other than Deepika’s
pretty face which is worth watching in the movie.
During the entire film the hero keeps saying (after making weird
faces) :’ Do not underestimate the power of a common man.’ Mr SRK, Mr Shetty and M/s UTV : Please do not
underestimate the power of a sincere and
common movie watcher. One day he will bring you down for throwing such trash at
him in the name of entertainment! Remember the fate of someone called Farah Khan and Sirish Kundra who kept giving us junks like'Tees Maar Khan' and 'Joker' with Akshay Kumar ?
I missed taking my kids for the movie. Knowing them I know
they would have laughed at all the ‘supposedly funny scenes.’ Seeing them I might have also shed my wooden
expression and joined them in wild laughter. Or am I underestimating my kids?
No comments:
Post a Comment