Rohit Shetty once again creates a successful rom-com which wins our hearts. A sweet love story with sparks of comedy ticks the entertainment boxes. The films tagline ‘Love has no language’ is the perfect four words to describe this film.
40 year old Mithai Wala, Rahul (Shak Rukh Khan) is tired of working in his Dadajee’s sweet shop. He’s getting older and simply wants to have fun. With Dadajee’s life ending, Rahul plans to work his way round to different cities with his close pals, whilst carrying his Granddads ashes. Taking the long route, Rahul climbs upon Chennai Express and innocently lets a beautiful girl climb aboard. But not only her, he reaches his hand out for a few evil-looking villains. Realising its too late to get off the train, he soon becomes intertwined with this girls situation. Meena (Deepika Padukone) explains her issues through singing tunes and Rahul realises he has become part of the problem. Their whole journey involves disasters, accidents, run away attempts and lets just say facing some powerful people.
Chennai Express begins with such enthusiasm and takes on a direct mode of address by introducing Rahul’s childhood (which is superbly shot). The fast paced beginning gives the audience a sense of character and basically an update of Rahul’s life. The comedy begins immediately with Rahuls Dadajee and again at the train scene. A memorable moment of complete laughter. The whole film tends to have moments of intertextual references based on SRK’s filmography. Starting with the train scene, where he picks up Meena by giving his hand out, thus complimented by the famous film song ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’. This which is followed by an hilarious conversation between Meena and Rahul whom try to explain their situation through famous tunes. Likewise, this is repeated towards the end of the film, yet we have an addition of the villain.
The fast action, clever comedy and gripping drama are all key highlights of the film. Deepike Padukone is absolutely outstanding as Meena. Her Tamil accent and dialect is profoundly engaging to hear. She has this luring tone that simply makes you smile. She fully dwells into the traditional role where she puts on a believable performance complimented with her bright costume. Deepika proves in Chennai Express that she is far from being a one-trick pony. Her versatility is evident in this film, due to the heavily different role she plays. Indeed, she doesn’t typically have any ‘item’ girl moments nor revealing scenes. She plays a decent and respectable character.
Likewise, the star of the Film, Shah Rukh Khan remarkably plays the role of Rahul and epically brings the comedy genre to the table. Hats off for the entertainment factor. His comedic moments and characteristics give the film an authentic touch. We see Rahul as such a simple guy with a huge heart. His normality is portrayed at a less cliché angle, where we surely buy his performance. The way he reacts in certain scenes, especially when Deepika is sleep talking, is unforgettable.
In terms of the action, we’re given the conventional fire explosions, car flips and glass shatters. However, I have to admit that the fight scene between Rahul and the villain was shockingly unconventional. Rahul gets hit quite a bit and we don’t see him winning until the very last moment. Shetty cleverly creates a moment of anticipation, where we are expecting Khan to kill this antagonist yet begins to lose instead.
The cinematography gave us some new shots and the isle in the train walk through was outstanding. The colour grading was in particular stunning, where vividly our visuals were enhanced.
Overall, Chennai Express is a must-watch. I thoroughly enjoyed it and part of it was due to the epic comedy. Even though, after the intermission the film began to slow down, the performance by Deepika and SRK kept the speed up. Their chemistry is beautiful and they get closer through every step of the journey. Rohit Shetty has created a superb film packed with romance, drama, action and comedy. Partially we do face a language barrier issue where most of the time I was confused by what they were saying, especially in Tamil. However, the audience were placed in Shah Rukh Khan’s shoes and by him not understanding, we felt heard. Hence, Miss.Subtitle definitely kept us on track. Last but not least, the intertexuality with films such as; Singham, My name is Khan and 3 Idiots was a great addition.
My Rating: 8/10
Written by: Meera Darji
Meera's Blog 