Introduction
There has been a stark difference between Shahrukh Khan's choice of scripts and Rohit Shetty's style of filmmaking and while nobody really thought that they would come together for a film, rumors started brewing about a possible collaboration in early 2012. Although the possible collaboration was initially planned to be the remake of 1982 comedy 'Angoor', the plans were scrapped and an original script was prioritized. This led to the birth of 'Chennai Express', a film that tried to bridge the North-South gap way before the recent 'Pan-India' trend. This was also the second collaboration of SRK and Deepika Padukone after Om Shanti Om (2007), and apart from them, the film starred Nikitin Dheer, and Sathyaraj in lead roles, while Kamini Kaushal, Lekh Tandon, and Mukesh Tiwari played supporting roles. In spite of being an extremely over-the-top, colorful, and slapstick film, with frequent tonal shifts (too overwhelming for a rather short runtime of 140 minutes); This film was convincingly well packaged with generous amount of typical Rohit Shetty 'Shtyle' (that's what they had on the official poster, LOL) sprinkled on top, which made the film what it is today! Chennai Express completes twelve years today, so read on to know how this film holds up a dozen years after it's release!
P.S- In case you do not understand the color scheme of the thumbnail poster, it is what the old Indian Railways' ICF coaches looked like. I thought it would be a nice trivia to use the shades of blue to make the poster, after all, the film has some serious 'train' involvement. :)
Basic Plot
A man's plan of immersing his late grandfather's ashes at Goa takes a turn, when he meets with a runaway bride on the same train and is bound to head for Chennai.
Positives
The leading pair
I love how director Rohit Shetty designed the characters of Rahul and Meena (played by SRK and Deepika respectively), by smartly infusing the North-South cultural difference in the story. The character arcs of the leading pair has been finely established and it's pretty surprisingly to see how these two characters start off from absolute scratch only to end up happily, just under 140 minutes; A really solid direction! Padukone's character 'Meena', becomes all the more entertaining and convincing when combined with her accent in the film. The choice of dialect was a pretty bold call for a commercial film to be honest (could've easily backfired for sure), but it went on to become one of the strongest points of the film, courtesy, Padukone's terrific act! Shahrukh as Rahul is pretty convincing, although a bit too loud and caricaturish at times, then again, that's what the script demanded, so it's a plus. Both of them manage to easily carry out a chaotic and childish accidental couple, affected with linguistic barriers, which enhanced the film's entertainment quotient several times. All in all, it's the perfect casting of SRK as a Mumbai guy and Deepika as a Chennai lady, which fueled in so much fun and adventure into the film back in 2013, that they still feel nice to watch even today!
Direction, Dialogues, Comedy, and Music
Rohit Shetty has been delivering back to back blunders in the past few years (Singham Again being the most recent example) but things used to be different 12 years back. After the brain-rot entertainer 'Bol Bachchan' (2012), Shetty collaborated with writers Yunus Sajawal, Sajid, and Farhad Samji once again for Chennai Express, and although the writers are currently among the most hated people by the audience, (owing to some criminally bad writing in many of their recent films) even they used to be decent writers and hence, the results were gold standard. Several homage and tributes to various old Hindi film and songs were nice additions and the communication between SRK and Deepika through songs was brilliant. I wonder how writers nowadays seem to have completely run out of ideas and dialogues for comedy films, while Chennai Express was what people were served in 2013. Frankly speaking, it's been 12 years since the release of this film, and till date, I haven't seen any other comedy film attempt something as fascinating as this. I just love how the comical lines worked for the film and also, the way they were executed overall.
Now, talking about music, you need to have a strong music department for the comedy to work, and this film paid great attention to that. Apart from the memorable songs composed by Vishal-Shekhar and a solid background score by Amar Mohile, this film had strange, unusual, and obnoxiously hilarious sound effects that would crack you up at several instances. It's feels so absurd listening to those sound effects in particular but I betcha, you would be in splits after seeing how stupefyingly well those sound effects go in sync with the comedy scenes! If we shift our focus to the direction portion, I have to admit that Rohit Shetty did a fantastic job here. You may not feel the same if you view the film from the art perspective, but, to convincingly pull off a musical action-comedy film whose writing was literally all over the place (it was good btw) was no joke. I particularly liked Shetty's idea of treating this film like a travel movie (hopping from one place to the other) which in turn, complemented the script, and helped a lot in generating the chemistry between the leading pair. The action was a blast, the music was sweet, and the comedy was on point, and most importantly, it was the old-schook Hindi film drama that bound the film with solid emotional angles. Absurd and entirely disparate factors were concocted with utmost confidence- almost like it was a walk in the park, and it is Shetty's 'devil may care' conviction that made this edgy and whacky action-comedy carve a place in peoples hearts, destined to live forever!
Underwhelming Aspects
Tonal Shifts
The main problem with 'Chennai Express' is it's frequent tonal shifts. Within a short runtime, the film tries to tick maximum number of checkboxes, starting from acting, to plot, to music, to dance, to comedy, to a dramatic climax, etc. I won't say the film fails to generate impact when hurriedly trying to go all guns blazing, but what it does, is generate a sense of shallow-ness throughout. I know this isn't a though-provoking film by any stretch of imagination, but at the same time, this film will be enjoyed by hardcore commercial fans who value entertainment over everything. Neutral audience would find solace in the music and comedy, but the others have little to expect. I did not quite like the one-dimensional character given to Sathyaraj, who is also a prey to the vehement narrative drift that this film has. The film's funny for 15 minutes- a song comes- drama unfolds- action ensues- back to comedy. This is a cycle that keeps on repeating itself until the end of the film, and hence, things may feel a bit less refined. Also, not to forget- the climax is a full blown bloody battle between Nikitin Dheer that goes on for about 12 minutes straight. Although it's very engaging to watch, it is an absolute 180 degree turnaround from a family friendly comedy to a mature 80's Bollywood blockbuster with so much unabashed bloodshed, that CBFC would've first puked, and would then order at least a dozen cuts (if, back then, the CBFC were as fragile as they are today).
Conclusion
Rohit Shetty brings to you all the comedy tropes, quirks and banters, and packages them into a single film: 'Chennai Express'. It seems like Shetty let his intrusive thoughts win, by providing a wholesome and whacky entertainment that knows no boundaries. You would probably feel that a film of this nature would certainly overlook the issue of a person travelling to Chennai without a ticket. But no, a ticket collector does arrive in the plot and when things start to get overboard, director Shetty comes back to his senses and makes the villain characters throw away the ticket collector from the train! Such is the level of obnoxious and escapist entertainment that this film presents to you. Shahrukh pulled Deepika into a moving train just in the beginning of the film and when she thanks him, SRK goes: 'nahi nahi, maine pehle bhi kiya hua hain aise' (No worries.. I've done this before; referring to the DDLJ climax). Absolute meta! SRK goes on to pull several goons into the same train and the DDLJ theme that played in the background, kept getting manly. Nonsensically hilarious! Some amount of body shaming, some amount of making fun of a patriarchal problem, and some amount of linguistic comedy- All of this would've been vehemently opposed by the 'woke' people had the film released today, but neither were these meant to hurt sentiments in any way, nor does Rohit Shetty care about woke people. So, it was a win-win combination all along. All things said and done, this film was correctly labelled as a far from perfect commercial comedy actioner upon it's release, but the fact is, the industry today fails to produce even imperfect files like these. Chennai Express struck a chord with the audience years years ago, in spite of being cartoonishly over the top, and it still continues to be that silly blockbuster that went out of character, generated emotions, and broke records!
Watch Out For
- Comedy and Dialogues
- SRK and Deepika
- Music
- The bloody climax
WTF Rating
7.5/10