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 Chandni Chowk To China attempts earnestly in every wrong place leaving the viewers little grounds to care about the madcap mockery and masterful martial arts. It really shocks to sit through Akshay's latest endeavor without an honest laughter even for once, in spite of all his desperate tomfoolery on display. In the previous year, he entertained us with some flamboyant comic scenes by performing with great enthusiasm.
The problem with Chandni Chowk To China is its ineffectual story that scarcely traces the changeover of the hero from a low-breed vegetable-chopper of Chandni Chowk to the Great Wall of China. Sidhu (Akshay Kumar), who peels vegetables to earn a living and prays to Ganapati Bappa to liberate him from his daily labor. And then, all on a sudden, adventure summons and Sidhu is taken off to the Great Wall from the paranthe wali galli of Chandi Chowk. Anyway, it could have been a neat foundation for a film, as the marvel it makes through the hero's sudden transportation. But the script is executed to be a medium for its star, not the story itself. So we get only a prolonged hero-centered story that rambles disjointedly, there is no emotional attachment with any of the characters, and more importantly, is only mildly entertaining in the best moments of the film.
Shidhu during his cooking and chopping vegetables, imagines that he has won a lottery, notwithstanding the rebuke of is adopted father Dada (Mithun Chakraborty) who regards that only hard work could bring success in life. However, when two visitors offered him to accompany him them to China to discover his fortune, Sidhu readily complies. The Chinese villagers were actually looking for the re-embodiment of their renowned combatant to save them from the villain, Hojo (Gordon Liu). Sidhu was unaware of Chopstick (Ranvir Shorey), who posed him as the translator between Sidhu and the Mandarin-speaking villagers cheating both of them to seize a chance along the trip with them. Chopstick is not the only one, fascinating spokesperson Sakhi (Deepika Padukone), also takes advantage from the sidha-saada (naive) Sidhu deceiving him out of his place in a line. Angry at this cheating, Sidhu becomes outrageous when he saw her fleeing from the authorities again in an airport. But, it was not Sakhi, Sidhu was mistaken by her missing sister, long assumed as dead, Suzy (also played by Deepika) - her evil twin who was adopted by Hojo (of course, as most of the typical commercial Bollywood movies, we knew that Sakhi and Suzy are destines to reunite). It is that sort of a movie where, as he was the hero, the hero has to be transformed into a prodigy, a terrific martial artist, no matter how tearful, feeble and fearful he had been before.
Hojo i s the criminal key-player in Chandni Chowk To China, who finds utmost delight in executing disobedient villagers. Liu, playing the role of Hojo, is the among the few best things about the film as he masterly fixes on his face a menacing look harmonized by a steely spark in his eyes and precise body language.
The turning point in the film comes with the mysterious reappearance of Chiang (Roger Yuan). Chiang is the father of Shikha and Suzy, an ex-cop and a martial art master, also believed to be been long dead. He trains up Sidhu to become an incredible martial artist and crush Hojo to death in a duel. Sidhu decided to fight Hojo himself to save both the spokeswoman's family and to save the villagers in jeopardy.
Honestly, the outcome is a model case of missed opportunities. For Akshay, unlike his earlier releases where he invigorated the box-office each time, this mega budget movie was a bad start for the new year. Same is for the director Nikhil Advani; it would have been the prospect to overlook his very last catastrophic outlay "Saam-e-Ishq". Frankly, the intolerance of the story is further compounded by the insufficient narration and utter deficiency of connectivity between the leading roles and the audience (though in his earlier comic works Akshay always managed to strike a harmony with his audiences.) Not even for a short while, we feel compassionate for the culturally displaced Sidhu, although he comes across numerous odds. Deepika, in spite of her double role, always seems to be lost and dejected in most of her parts.
Nonetheless, there are certain moments that grasp your attention. Chandni Chowk To China definitely has its slip-ups, but it also contains many lighter-than-air instances, to commend it. Like, Sidhu's martial arts schooling are fabulously devised with Deepika's Chinese father. Again, these martial art series are a fresh element in Bollywood and their arrangements in the film is better than lots of Hollywood productions. And, though short in supply, there was elegance in Deepika's light paces and twinkling eyes, playing twin-sisters. The writer, Sridhar Raghaban, could made it more than a chunk of laughable incidents and without being an awkward lampooning of the Chinese and the film could be a large screen manifestation transporting China to Bollywood.
Najnin Nahar
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