Chennai Express - Better Marketed Than Made

Caution: This post contains spoilers both literally and otherwise!

OhhK so! when three young people ( a guy and two girls) have had their dinner earlier than their usual schedule and have no energy left to roam on the streets or malls but they still wish to stick around and cannot go to each other's place because of the gender restrictions at their respective PGs or guest houses, what do they do? They watch a movie!

So, here we were, my husband, my sister and myself, who decided to go for a movie after a sumptuous dinner. The choice between 'Bhaag Milkha Bhaag' and 'Chennai Express' was tough! None of us wanted to watch either of the two. After much discussions and surfing on 'Book My Show' we opted to board the Chennai Express. What followed was a visit to beautiful and scenic places and a meeting with a  bunch of people, who made no sense, en route.

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First up, I sincerely need to send a message across to the Chennai Express Team:

Guys, your movie is minting money not because you made a fabulous flick, 

not because it's close to being awesome but only and only because 

you had a great post-production strategy planned for the promotion. 

The huge hoardings, the full size newspaper ads, pre-launches, appearances on 'all' tele-shows, interviews and 

the 'bokwaas' dialog by Deepika (which happens to be the only non-bokwaas element of the movie) did it for you!

How I wish, Rahul (the protagonist of the movie) had not left the urn with his grand-dad's ashes in the train or may be if Tendulkar had hit that century, the grandfather had not died. Why! Why! And if all this had to happen, why did Meenamma not miss the train?

I heard Sharukh talking about the movie in an interview. Very excitedly, he referred to two scenes in the movie as his favorites- One, when he said 'Rahul, naam to kabhi nahi suna hoga!'. Two, when he teases the female lead, Deepika over sharing the bed, when they pretend to be husband and wife. Unfortunately, none of the two scenes or Shahrukh's dialogs, had the power to glue the viewers. If I have to credit anybody here, it would be Deepika for pulling off the I-mutter-in-sleep role. She was fab!

By now, I am pretty sure you all know that I did not like the movie much. I am no SRK fan, so seeing him utter those (supposedly) funny dialogs did not make me sit on the edge of the chair, Rohit Shetty's blowing the cars concept is not what I am very fond of, most of the songs made me wish I had the control to fast-forward them and flicks like these fail to tickle my funny bone.

But between all this, let's try to pick some ripe berries in the bush!

Talking about the goods, I loved the pick of actors. Mostly the dark, moustachy, fat and very scary assistants to the villian. I wonder where the casting director found them. And then the master of all, Thangabali! Ask me, I'd rather have Deepika go with Thangabali, played by Nikitin Dheer than Sharukh. Gosh, what a personality this guy has!! and the black kurta that he adorns in the movie brings the best out for the character.

The only part I was all eyes-and-ears-and-nose-and-throat for in the movie was, when Sharukh and Deepika try to exchange messages by singing them as songs. That was fun! And also the train sequence, towards the start of the movie, that was hilarious too.

While Sharukh was his usual self, Deepika looked good on the screen. After watching the trailers, I knew Deepika would be my anchor for the movie and it happened just that way. Liked her accent. Loved her flowy, bright and colorful lehengas and with the bindi on, she really looked pretty!

Summing it, there was absolutely no story, which made it not-my-kinda-flick. Silly twists like Sharukh reaching Sri Lanka (gosh, really?!?), irritating humor - the 'tok-tok-tok' scene with a midget, the hero being unaffected by his beloved grandparents emotions but realizing his duties after watching his heroine run in saree for the urn (did they mean to strengthen the adage- actions speak louder than words) and my inability to tag it as a RomCom (for the romance was weak and comedy poor) gets the movie somewhere around 2.5 to 3 from me, on a scale of 5.

I would have happily skipped it, had it not been for the huge posters around the city and Sharukh talking about Chennai Express on every TV channel. Very well marketed but not made!