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Movie Review: Chennai Express

Director: Rohit Shetty

Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Nikitin Dheer and Sathyaraj

Any attempt to intellectualise Chennai Express is futile. This film is unabashedly juvenile in its sense of humour and entertainment. Shah Rukh Khan is in full-on self deprecation mode. Deepika Padukone speaks in a caricature-ish Tamil accent. More than half the film’s dialogue is in Tamil. The story arc is so simple that you can fit it in a single tweet. Despite all its shortcomings, this is still a funny film. It’s peppered with humorous set pieces and colourful locales and songs. Rohit Shetty makes chettinad-style masala movies. And that’s the perfect description of this film. If you don’t plan to engage in a multi-lateral critique of dramatic elements and narrative, this film can be fun.

Movie Review: Chennai Express

It begins with Shah Rukh Khan playing Rahul and his grandfather passing away just before his 100th birthday. Kamini Kaushal (playing SRK’s grand mom) makes Rahul swear that he’d immerse the ashes at Rameshwaram. Rahul is the smug types and promises he’d do so but is actually planning to go to Goa instead. In throwing his grand mom off, he boards Chennai Express and then that fateful parody of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge occurs. SRK stretches out to help Deepika Padukone board the train. From there on, it turns into a full blown Tamil film, with sporadic bits of Hindi dialogue. And lots and lots of gags, most of which are amusing.


Almost throughout the film, SRK is feeding off playing Rahul for the umpteenth time. Only this time it’s with a serious pinch of salt. It’s like a satirical homage to all his cinematic moments. He’s on a trolley, sliding left to right on the screen, arms out stretched in copyright SRK style. There are a few parody scenes recreated from films like DDLJ, Koyla My Name Is Khan etc. It’s good to see a superstar take the mickey out of his own legacy. Good sense of humour on both SRK and director Rohit Shetty. When SRK’s not going-all-comedic-guns-blazing, it’s Deepika Padukone muttering away to cartoonish Tamil accent glory. If you thought Hema Malini had an accent, you need hear this act. It’s campy, it’s cute and most importantly it adds the right amount of colour to Deepika’s outlandish Meena amma character.


As is the tradition with masala movies, they walk a very thin line. They step a little too much on either side and chances are they’ll end up offending someone. Chennai Express does it a lot. It makes no bones about playing to the gallery. Rohit Shetty characteristically sneaks in a car chase/blow up sequence too. SRK is all over the place. So much so that he even has a completely deranged scene with a midget talking in gibberish. And right at the end he has an angry monologue and a very violent fight with Thangabali (Nikitin Dheer). SRK and Deepika talk in sing songs, adding impromptu Hindi dialogue to popular film numbers so that others around them can’t figure out what they’re up to. If that sounds ludicrous it is.


This is neither trademark SRK material nor regular Rohit Shetty action-comedy. Chennai Express is like a ’80s Tamil potboiler reworked with a Hindi cast. It has a unique new flavour. The pace of the movie could’ve been better. Certain sections like the scene on a smuggling boat stick out like a sore thumb. But it does well in mixing romantic moments and comedy. SRK tries his hand at physical comedy, Deepika defines the epitome of South Indian beauty and songs like Chinmayee’s Titli and Kashmir main tu kanyakumari add a nice touch to the proceedings. This is a cute and colourful masala movie, definitely worth the escalated price of the admission ticket

Mahabubur Rahaman

Interested in eCommerce, Marketing, Social Engineering, Serial Entrepreneur, UX, Music, Blog. Writer at @Techinasia @Medium and http://wjarman.com

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