Not writing a formal review on "Chennai Express" because the movie is unbelievably crass and horrible, far worse than I thought.
Rohit Shetty is not known for making quality movies anyway, but at least his earlier movies had some form of comedy and entertainment. In this one there is not one scene that one could appreciate as real comedy and would remember. The intended humourous scenes fall flat on your face and are plain irritating. Stereotyping one community and overacting unnecessarily, really do not fall under any kind of comedy.
Shah Rukh Khan hams, overacts miserably and probably delivers his worst performance till date. After a horrible Ra One, an average Jab Tak Hai Jaan and then this one, SRK might be still earning money, but his standing as an actor and the quality of movies he stands for takes a severe beating. When he looks back, he would probably regret that with all the money and power he wielded, at this stage of his career, he could have made some real world class cinema that could have made Bollywood international in the true sense and taken Indian cinema to the next level.
Though nothing exceptional, Deepika Padukone tries her best and does deliver in her role of a Tamil girl, to an extent. The other actors, Deepika's "Don" father, rowdy cousins, fiance, are well cast, but they become a part of the terrible cacophony masquerading as cinema. The cinematography is good and Shetty is very good in showing long convoys of cars and then blowing them up!
Having said this there are two things we need to consider.
The first point is Shah Rukh Khan's business model.
So marketing and hype renders quality and content of cinema optional and unnecessary. The reviews are amazingly guarded during the first week and though no one says the movie is a class apart for obvious reasons, they also do not say that movie is pure garbage. By this time the marketing, the long Eid weekend among other things, ensures an earning of 150 crores at the box office. After the film has earned, the reviews now are pretty scathing.
So SRK's network and strategy has to be appreciated from a purely business point of view and he cannot be really blamed if it works for him.
The second point is on the Indian movie goer and his choice of films.
I can understand different people may like different genres and kinds of movies, all directors cannot be Satyajit Rays and some movies would be made just for entertainment and/or comedy. So for me "Munnabhai" was an example of pure entertainment and "Hera Pheri" was pure comedy. Does the Indian audience really not understand the difference between these and horrible cinema like Chennai Express?
How can Indians pay 150 crores for a movie like this, while quality cinema routinely bombs at the box office? The saving grace is that movies like "Paan Singh Tomar", "Kahaani" and "Bhaag Milkha Bhaag" are also doing well, so there is some hope. The ideal situation would be when these movies make much more money than mindless movies like Chennai Express, but for that, the Indian movie goer has to mature big time!
I can be accused of being "cinematically snobbish" and then one can say something like "If the people accept something, it is good and successful." However the same logic is given by Indian politicians, after all it is again the people who choose them too, but can we be really be proud of the people who run our nation?
The larger problem is that success of movies like these, redefines the definition of "good cinema", so other film makers would follow this model since it is much easier to make a movie without a good script, direction and quality acting. So we can expect much more garbage to flow out of Bollywood.
So while India would remain a nation of corrupt politicians, it would also maintain its status of being a nation that makes the most movies, but very few that can take on the best in the world.
