After donning some serious roles in Don-2 and Jab Jak Hai Jaan, Shah Rukh Khan takes a break and embarks Chennai Express. On the other hand, the director Rohit Shetty hasn’t ever made any movie without Ajay Devgan. The peculiar combination of SRKRohit, definitely makes the Bollywood movie-goer very anxious about the outcome. Most importantly, the question was, whether it will be a ‘Rohit Shetty- style-film’ or an ‘SRKsignature-film’. And another obvious question is whether the combination works.
Well, Chennai Express is an intelligently blended SRK & Rohit Shetty movie, where the director rightly exploits the super-entertaining capability of King Khan and at the same time, adorning it with his own signature action and executing comedy sequences. Hence, the combo works big time, making it a paisa-vasool entertainer.
Chennai Express is the story of 40-yr old single Halwaiwala, Rahul (Shah Rukh Khan), who gets stuck in the train, as a result of attempting to save Meenamma (Deepika) who is in trouble. Rahul ends up trapped in Meeenamma’s village where her father is the local don forcing her to marry the tall, scary and hairy ‘Thangabali’. Rest of the movie is how Rahul tries to escape from the village and how the love blossoms between him and Meenamma.
The story has nothing much to offer, which was anyway not expected from a Rohit Shetty film. It is the comic sequences that score the brownie points. The entire train sequence is hilarious and the first half rides very high with unstoppable comedy. However, the pace falls down post-interval, and when the story starts getting into an emotional zone, the viewer might miss the comic parts (as the first half tunes the minds to expect more and more humour). The second half is later saved by good songs by Vishal and Shekar, and also a couple of hilarious scenes. The movie ends on a predictable note of David-Goliath battle, but after an interesting speech by Rahul. Cinematography is capturing some beautiful locales of our very own beautiful country.
SRK with his own comic timing makes you laugh till you nearly split a gut. It was nice to see him honestly acting his age, and indirectly conveying to the audience that people should not expect him now to do a DDLJ/KKHH ‘Rahul’, who can sweep any woman off her feet. Deepika is very good as Meenamma and wisely doesn’t over-do her accent. She tries to be as simple and natural as possible when it came to performance. Nikitin Dhir had nothing much to perform, but his giant looks helped him for the role. Satya Raj was brief but very good. There were also some other good Tamil actors, but didn’t have any substantial roles.
Overall, ‘Chennai Express’ is a clean entertainer from the combination of two brands–SRK and Rohit Shetty, with good amounts of entertainment quotient. Put your thinking caps aside and ‘Ready, Steady, Po’ to the fun ride.
Reviewed by Rag Mayur
