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Quint goes from Austin to CHANDNI CHOWK TO CHINA and thinks he loves Bollywood now...
SPOILER ALERT !!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I became aware of this movie, Bollywood’s CHANDNI CHOWK TO CHINA, only recently. I don’t follow Bollywood, I’m sorry to say. In fact this film might even be my… second or third… beginning to end Bollywood film.
And I typically have an odd reaction to Bollywood flicks. I always tend to love the musical numbers and dance stuff, but find myself bored to tears with the rest of it. Maybe I’ve matured over my first teenage viewings of Indian cinema or maybe I just didn’t see the good stuff. I couldn’t even tell you what I watched before, but I think it was a couple of ‘70s Bollywood flicks.
There’s a Cinemark in Austin that has one screen reserved for Bollywood films. It’s odd… it’s a shitty little multiplex barely hanging on in South Austin that gives multiple screens to the usual crap (PAUL BLART, I’m looking at you), but they always, always, always have at least one screen devoted to a new Bollywood film.
I watched THE READER there recently and decided to walk over after Kate Winslet finally learned to read and the credits rolled. I didn’t technically theater-hop. I didn’t sit down, just stood off to the side for a moment watching a crazy dweeby Indian man sing and dance like a fucking rock star, wooing an incredibly hot woman.
I kind of decided then and there that I would start checking out the Bollywood flicks that came through this theater and, as luck would have it, one of the biggest Bollywood US releases was on the horizon and that’s the film I watched Friday night and feel compelled to write up today.
CHANDNI CHOWK TO CHINA is absolutely fucking ridiculous. Fuck. Ing. Re-Dick-U-Loos. But in all the best ways. In the same ways that Stephen Chow’s movies are fucking ridiculous. In the same way the Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons are ridiculous, except on a much bigger scale with dash of curry.
It really did remind me of KUNG FU HUSTLE. It has a comically strong old man who is always there with a free kick in the ass for his adopted son, the klutz turned martial arts master star of the movie Sidhu (Akshay Kumar), that sends him into the heavens, above the town of Chandi Chowk, hanging for a few beats before falling back down to earth.
But imagine KUNG FU HUSTLE mixed with a Bruce Lee movie mixed with the 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN mixed with SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, with a dash of MOULIN ROUGE, James Bond and an Adam Sandler movie. I know that last ingredient smells bad, but trust me… when you mix it all together it makes a delicious dish.
Sidhu is a vegetable chopper in the city of Chandni Chowk, frustrated with his place in life, searching for something greater. He thinks he finds it in a potato that kind of resembles God Ganesh… and maybe he did, but not in the way he thinks. That potato causes a series of fights between Sidhu and his Dada, the absolute badass Mithun Chakraborty (what an awesome name) who has the strong kick that sends Sidhu to the heavens once more. When he falls back down to Earth he lands at the feet of two Chinese men who are in a mission trying to find the reincarnated form of the legendary protector of their small village, which is located near the Great Wall of China.
With some sneaky translating from Sidhu’s greedy sham mystic friend, Chopstick (Ranvir Shorey), Sidhu thinks their repeating the phrase Kill Hojo means that he is cool. Chopstick sees a chance for a free trip to China and some loot and women, so he keeps lying to Sidhu about what the Chinese are actually wanting. He even has the angel and devil on his shoulder gag… but in a fucked up way… This character is supposed to be half Chinese and half Indian… the Angel is represented as a clean cut Indian him, dressed all in white and the devil is his Chinese half in a red kimono!!! Seriously!
Anyway, what the villagers need is someone to protect them from the evil bowler-hat wearing Hojo (the great Gordon Liu from the aforementioned 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN and, of course, the KILL BILL films) who is essentially the evil Chinese version of Oddjob from James Bond, with a killer razor-tipped boomerang bowler hat.
I don’t know exactly what he’s doing… he looks like the head of an evil corporation, but somehow the villagers are doing a lot of regular hard labor. Oh, and he smuggles diamonds.
Did I mention this movie is 2 ½ hours long?
It’s epic. You can tell a shit-load of money went into this thing. I’ll be damned if they didn’t actually film on the Great Wall of China or at least spent enough money to fake me out, but there are a ton of fight scenes on the wall and the whole thing is chock (or should I say “chowk”) full of production value.
The dance numbers are mostly woven in through dream sequences and parties… I figured it’d be a given that a movie in which a man can get kicked up into the clouds and fall back to Earth, where a hot girl can have an iPod that can act as a translator for any language and where a vegetable chopper can learn the art of kung fu and take down a master like Gordon Liu that they wouldn’t have any worry about trying to explain away a traditional Bollywood dance and musical number within the story, but I guess I was wrong.
The songs are catchy and I love that there didn’t seem to be any attempt at actually matching the words to the singers’ lips. Instead of getting professionals (outside of the leads) they cast faces, especially with the Chinese actors. There’s one scene in particular that is a delight, but I need to set it up…
The female lead is the stunning Deepika Padukone in dual roles. One is Sakhi, a famous Indian television personality, and the other is Meow Meow, Gordon Liu’s lead assassin/drug runner. Hold on, it’ll make sense in a minute…
Good God, she’s stunning.
Anyway, there’s an elaborate soap opera-ish backstory for Padukone’s characters… They’re twins, one with slightly more Asian features because she’s the product of a marriage between a Chinese man and an Indian woman. Her father was a police inspector who was a thorn in Liu’s side, so one day… on the Great Wall of China, of course… Liu stages an attack on Chiang, her father (played by Roger Yuan) and ends up stealing one of the girls, assuming Chiang’s death… and rightly so… The fucker falls off the Great Wall of China, but I guess nobody can die of a fall in this universe.
Instead Chiang becomes an old beggar, haunted by flashes of memory of his previous life, but unable to get his head on straight and fully realize who he is.
One of his daughters goes to India, becomes the face of a dance gadget… a belt that loops around your legs and forces you to dance in different styles depending on what button is pressed… and the other is Hojo’s henchwoman.
So, the Indian girl has always felt something missing and goes to China around the same time Sidhu is recruited by the villagers to be their savior. One of her first stops is a factory in China run by the company she works for where she runs into a Chinese labor room led by the Chinese Q.
I’m not kidding. He provides her with a spray that is essentially a punch in a can, a bullet-proof parachute umbrella and her magical iPod and pink studded earpiece that allows her to understand and speak in any language. All in a bizarre musical sequence that feels more like it should be in something like THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN INVINCIBLE than in a Bollywood flick. It’s just fun and the Chinese actors look like they were pulled out of Chinese restaurants around India and are having a blast being bad at singing and dancing in this movie.
The first half is Sidhu acting the fool and then the second half turns suddenly serious. The tone shift is radical and doesn’t ever really return to the goofiness of the beginning. Sidhu has everything stripped from him and hits rock bottom.
It’s here that he comes under the tutelage of Roger Yuan, the crazy beggar ex-policeman and father of the two hotties. And the movie turns to the typical chop sockey structure of the hopeless student slowly learning the ways of Kung Fu to exact revenge. It’s very much 36th CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN.
There are some plot holes… For instance, Sidhu has a great fight the first time he’s out after the training where does powerful Matrix shit and then for some reason he never unleashes the stuff again, even when he’s overpowered during the climactic fight with Gordon Liu.
But that’s okay. The movie had me by this point and Akshay Kumar is a surprisingly good fighter, so I didn’t mind the tonal shift.
I have to recommend that you guys check your local listings and give this one a shot if it’s playing near you, even if you have never seen a Bollywood film before. It’s crazy, it’s convoluted, it’s overly convenient at times, but it’s really fucking entertaining.
I have to put a PS to this review… This is a spoiler, so don’t read if you don’t want to know…
But at the very end of the movie, after Sidhu defeats Liu, he’s celebrating with the town… and Chinese midgets covered in dirt and wearing grass skirts come up to him. He asks what is wrong and they speak the click language!!! They are, apparently, African (I guess the dirt is the Indian or Chinese version of blackface?) and need his help, prompting a return of Sadhi in Chandni Chowk to Africa.
I would kill your mother, my mother and all the mothers in the world to see a sequel where Sadhi uses his new-found super Kung Fu to rescue a village of dirty Chinese click-language speaking midgets for 2 ½ hours. Pllllleeeeaaassseeee movie Gods! I don’t ask for a lot… just give me this one thing…
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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+ Expand All
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And from your descrip it's a complete rip of Stephen Chow.
Will watch this out of morbid curiousity cos I usually can't stand Bollywood. -
...and so of course now that it's playing it's ONLY playing on one screen at the MOST out of the way multiplex for me to get to in this city. Not sure I can make my way out there this week, and given the zero promotion its getting that just might mean I don't get to see it in theatre at all. Grrrrr.
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Giant productions plus random kookiness put to catchy music. That woman is glorious.
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And thought it looked hilarious. The only Bollywood preview that ever made me want to see the movie. I think it's funny that with the success of Slumdog (terrible second half btw) and the import/export of cinema money between Hollywood/Bollywood, and now this movie, that we're set for an Indian revolution. Get ready for the Bollywood hype! They showed some marketing chops already by naming their industry "Bollywood", impossible for Americans to forget.
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The run time and the RottenTomates meter has put me off.
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...that came up with this one?
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Don is a great flick for Americans to check out- the chicks are hot, the action is AWESOME..and the few songs that are in there are easy to fast forward. Great story.
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the original is great too ( late 1970's ) but the remake in 2006 is great
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With Bollywood gaining more attention, those that want to sample a bit of the culture can also try - Dil Chahta Hai, Black, Monsoon Wedding and Lagaan.
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Oh and please remember that even the big Bollywood films have miniscule budgets compared to Hollywood.
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I'd bang her so hard that afterward she'd look like Beetle Bailey after Sarge gets done stomping his ass.
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The film looks incredibly cheap. The star has a good attitude though and has been a Bollywood star for 20 years they say. The film itself looks awkward.
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http://tinyurl.com/7e47kk
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Uhh...look. If it looks like a stupid movie, sounds like a stupid movie, and quacks like a stupid movie...
DON'T TRY TO SELL IT TO ME AICN!
BOLLYWOOD + HOLLYWOOOD = LEAVE IT ALONE. Stop trying to sell people on Bollywood. If it happens it happens, but it is NOT going to happen with bullshit like this. There are only so many drugs I can do. Take your Slumdog hype (good movie, but come the fuck on) and spin...hard. -
If that was about a month ago Quint I'll bet it was 'Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi' with Shahrukh Khan. I just read a minute ago he was at the Golden Globes to present 'Slumdog' (which makes sense, considering he's the biggest star in India and was an actual host of India's "Millionaire") and I'm pissed I missed it now. The person who recommended 'Don' was right, it's also got SRK and is a blast. Another good Western style action-comedy would be 'Dhoom' and its sequel 'Dhoom 2' if you're interested in seeking them out.
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you cant spell 'chakraborty' without 'abort'
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Shit! I should have known about this. Does the music still kick ass?
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And I swear I've tried. I guess I'm too used to Western and European flicks, and so the sudden tone change which occurs in Bollywood stuff (usually when a dance number is needed) usually loses me.That's not to say that I view Bollywood stuff as bad. From what I've seen (and I've watched around six or seven movies), it's always well made and nicely shot. This looks interesting and I'll probably check it out at one point although I doubt I'd pay to see it.
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Sequel is already in works, though not sure if it is really Africa.
Where movie lost is the constant shift in tones, something that Quint very conveniently glossed over. Problem with movie is not that it is a chopsucky mix of everything from 36th Chamber to KungFu Hustle... but that it doesn't FLOW from one tone to another. -
other than the clumsy man-child lead character is the fact that movie throws EVERYTHING. That Gordon Liu morphing into a laughing potato... don't tell me it wasn't ripped off The Waterboy.
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It depends on your taste in music. The remake's soundtrack is much more modern sounding, most of the tracks fall somewhere in the pop/dance/techno category. Also, only two songs from the original made it into the new one, "Yeh Mera Dil" and "Khaike Paan Banaraswala." Here's a couple of YouTube links if you want to check them out:http://tinyurl.com/76bzp5 http://tinyurl.com/8nlwkw
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Jan 18, 2009 10:35:05 AM CST
The love child of Ratner and Chow decided to make a bollywood fi
by mike_d
weird
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Arent on board with a lot of Bollywood fare. Bollywood is only Hindi cinema and that is just one language so, it is just one part of the Indian film industry.
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They even used on of the songs in Slum Dog Millionaire..Best part is that Don 2006 has some twists and turns which make it better than the original. FYI- 2 of the original songs from are remade for this one.
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We need a fucking Hong Kong film talkback!!! Most everything coming out of Hollywood fucking sucks anyway. Christ we could spend the next three years discussing amwesome films shot in the 70's alone.
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1. It isn't made for anyone other than Indians? So the West aren't going to get the cultural references.
2. It can be quite racist at times in its portrayal of the Chinese. Thats cos' Chinese are a minority in India and seen in the same way Latinos are seen in California.
3. These are musicals. If you don't like musicals, you won't like Bollywood.
4. Indian cinema is not Bollywood. Bollywood is just a movie genre. That's all. Just like every Chinese or Hong Kong movie isn't a Kung Fu movie, the same goes for Bollywood - it just has the most money!
5. When its done well, its really done well. But when done bad - god is sucks! Chandni Chowk to China - has been badly reviewed by all in India...it is a mad mad mad movie. Don't expect a plot that works. Don't expect logic. Just go in, shake your head at how mad it is, and walk out smiling. That's it.
6. The end. -
...you are literally insane.
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the first (and only) girl who came from riding me. I had some stiff morning wood that day, and dude she worked that clit until her passion flooded all over me...and at that age I didn't know girls could cum like that.
In fact, I've noticed a difference between a girl getting wet and actually cumming. -
it sounds pretty ridiculous. I've seen Indian movies before, since my family is Pakistani, but I've never gotten into them.
But with that said Slumdog Millionaire = best movie of the year! I never thought I would like a movie more than the Dark Knight and Milk this year but it was definitely slumdog. -
Way to go Cards!
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...And it's not a cultural difference that keeps me out. It's that they are fucking shit. Really crappy films. Cheap, exploitive, boring and lazy. Notice I said BOLLYWOOD films, not Indian films in general, of which there are many good ones. That said, the trailer for this is pretty funny and it sounds like it may be the first crossover Bollywood film that will work for western audiences. I'm gonna check it out just for the bizare value alone. By the way, as bad as Bollywood films are, they are in a whole other class of goodness compared to Pakistani action movies. Holy shit, Ed Wood must have converted to Islam and opened up a film school over there.
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Not Indian.
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Steelers baby!
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Darn movie isn't anywhere near me and I love me some Gordon Lui. I'm always happy to see Gordon working. He's the original Shaw Brothers hero.
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just read this comment and tell me you disagree.
"I would kill your mother, my mother and all the mothers in the world to see a sequel where Sadhi uses his new-found super Kung Fu to rescue a village of dirty Chinese click-language speaking midgets for 2 ½ hours. Pllllleeeeaaassseeee movie Gods! I don’t ask for a lot… just give me this one thing…" -
And they've never heard of this film. I'm beginning to think they're sequestered from the actual culture....
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there are several languages in India (they speak Kannada in Bangalore, for example, where I've spent months working) - and yes, 95% of all Bollywood is in Hindhi so does not necessarily have wide appeal. However, it is still immensely popular. I've seen a four block line down MG road in Bangalore with people queued up to see the latest Bollywood "smash" - and many of these films are subtitled in English (since it is an English speaking country). Bollywood remains a critical component of the Indian arts....I can't get into it personally but I respect it's importance.
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CC2C is a big deal, very hyped, but its not doing well review wise in India, cause its plain fucking ridiculous. You guys may like it cause its stephen chow crazy. Now if you want good bollywood, try Satya, Company, Dil Chahta Hai, Lagaan, Johnny Gaddar, Ek Haseena Thi. Im sick of you douchebags saying "i tried bollywood but it sucks" well, if I saw only Adam Sandler movies i'd think all of Hollywood sucks too.
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the original is like a million times better than the crappy remake. Also the guy who recommended Dhoom and Dhoom2 can go die.
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Pakistan's "Lollywood" (named after the city of Lahore) mostly center around Punjabi culture.The industry is pretty dead now, it was known for the old films of Sultan Rahi for over the top crazy Punjabi stuff. The plots were usually similar to American Westerns, which makes sense since these were mostly set back in the day (the era seems similar to a rural version of say... Gangs in New York). These things have a cult following all over, especially over the border in Indian Punjab. Check YouTube for "Maula Jatt".Imagine Star Trek II's Khan (R.I.P. btw) pretending to be equal parts Chuck Norris and Bill the Butcher while overacting and grandstanding and kicking a lot of ass.I'm waiting for someone to make an actual serious Western-style movie set in that area though, Punjab and the northwest frontier areas of what is now Pakistan. Almost any American Western plot could be ported right over, just use all the local culture and a dash of historical relevancy (the British... the impact of Islam) and you got a great and entertaining film on your hands.I have no idea why Bollywood hasn't tried. I guess the rest of India (aside from its own Punjabis) prefers the tragic and quirky love stories, not psychotic over the top badassery.
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Yes, the original is amazing. The remake is overly stylised and has a lot of crazy stuff happening. But dont knock the people who like it - just look at most of the other stuff around it and you'll know why they like it. Dhoom however is another matter.
Recently, I would recommend Taare Zameen Par. A nicely taken film about an issue that has not been highlighted enough. -
C'mon- who saw that ending coming? It was great. Can someone here recommend good Shah Rukh Khan Films to rent? I saw Don, Swades and Om SHanti Om- anything else worth my time?
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you're kidding right? So one must like a movie cause its better in relative terms than crap? Don's remake completely lost the kinetic non stop energy of the original, the badassness of evil Amitabh (which IMO shah rukh couldn't begin to replicate), brought a terrible replacement for Helen in Kareena Kapoor, totally didnt bother even explaining the twin angle assuming everyone knew the story. The ending was kinda ok, but it was overly stylized as a whole. I didn't even care about any of the characters. I admire Farhan Akhtar as a filmmaker, but this was his worst misstep.
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try Chak De India, which I thought was a very well made sports film. I liked Swades, cause it was one of the few movies (along with Chak De) where he doesn't play "Shah Rukh Khan". Also, I like one of Shah Rukh's older movies in his anti-hero phase. Its called Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa. Not sure it will hold up now. Other good stuff is Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (prolly India's most profitable by the book bollywood romance ever), and Kal Ho Naa Ho.
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I tried- TRIED watching the Sholay Remake- What a fucking disaster- Maybe that's why I think Don the remake is great!
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I agree - just look at the Sholay remake to know how much better Don is. ANd dont get me started about Sarkar 2/Sarkar Raj.
But I agree with most of your points moviemaniac, the originals will always be better. I however give Farhan A- for effort.
To Jugdish - you've got some good recommendations there. Start with Chak De, then DDLJ and go on to Kabhi ha... and Kal Ho... I like many of his early negative roles as well - try Darr, Baazigar.
And don't miss 'Karan Arjun' - not that great but still a Bollywood cult classic. The recent 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai' and 'Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna' are also must-sees. -
And if you like DDLJ, see 'Dil To Pagal Hai' as well.
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