I would like to take this opportunity to ask Twinkle Kumar [nee Khanna] if there was ever a time when her husband Akshay tried cooking for her, did so rather woefully, and she felt the politest response was to giggle.
In this hypothetical situation, Kumar might have mistaken this for genuine mirth, and assumed -- along with fellow dinner guest Shridhar Raghavan (the writer of Bluffmaster and Khakee -- that the idea of him as a chef was surefire comic gold, a prospect the actor and writer tried out first with Raj Kumar Santoshi'sabominable disaster Family, and then this latest Nikhil Advani blooper, Chandni Chowk To China .
A film that makes Singh Is Kinng seem like a highly textured work of complex characterisation and nuanced writing, Chandni Chowk To China is a disastrous overbudget mess -- and it may even turn out to be the one film so weak that even current box-office almighty Akshay Kumar can't save it.
He tries his best, but the film itself can't quite decide whether to be a massively over-the-top bit of masala (like Kumar's own vaguely enjoyable Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi) or an out-and-out spoof (like Shah Rukh Khan's [Images] guilty pleasure silly movie Baadshah). No, this one slots into a painful no-man's-genre area, and, clearly confused between the campy comic route and the overtly melodramatic path, constantly stumbles around.
A scene from Chandni C howk To ChinaSample, if you will, this early contender for the year's most bizarre dialogue: Kumar has been trained in Kung Fu, his arms turned into lethal weapons using something called the Iron Forearm technique. Soon he's folding Deepika Padukone into these aforementioned steely arms, and saying [I translate, roughly] 'I have Iron Forearms. Soon I'll have Iron Legs, an Iron Chest, Iron Stomach,' he pauses to look down pointedly, 'and an Iron...' Here he trails off as the girl coyly covers his mouth, saying 'Enough' with a smile.
'Don't stop me now,' retorts he, 'My entire body is now made of iron.' She smiles, flutters eyelids, and breathily says, 'Oh, mere Iron Man.'
Nope, not kidding.
But Iron Man creator Stan Lee isn't the only Lee this constantly underwhelming film would disappoint. The film's patently loopy plot involves a reincarnated Chinese warrior, a half-Chinese half-Indian translator whose origin story gets even more muddled at the end, a Hindi-speaking Chinese cop with twin daughters who have divvied up their Indian and Chinese features based on where they live, and a baddie who borrows his big gimmick from a James Bond villain's sidekick.
And all of the above, unbearably insane as it sounds, could still have made for a perfectly enjoyable film had it completely embraced the absurd and gone for laughs, but Chandni Chowk To China oscillates between a kick-propelled Akshay flying several blocks and the very same man being humiliated and spat upon, with an unsubtle background score suggesting we should be sad. Sigh. We are, but the pity we feel isn't for the hero, it's for the film that could have been.
In the middle of all this martial arts moron-giri, Deepika plays Miss TSM, an online shopping saleswoman (her infomercial is one of the film's high points) as well as her twin sister Meow Meow, a hot Chinese vamp. And while the catty Oriental Deepika looks significantly edible, her presence only serves to make Deepika 1.0 look depressingly dull, and after seeing two of her share the same frame we can no longer run from the fact that the word acting and this pretty girl don't quite belong in the same sentence.
A scene from Chandni Chowk To ChinaBut isn't Akshay good, you wonder. Isn't he the man who routinely makes scriptless movies enjoyable? Doesn't he often work despite the script and the scenes, simply by dint of being who he is? Sure he does, and he manages a few genuine laughs this time around as well, yet his primary achievement in this film is that his character connects completely with the audience: as his protagonist Sidhu haplessly wonders what's going on around him, we sit in the darkened theatre and feel his dazed-and-confused pain.
What flummoxes me completely is the fact that this film is produced by Rohan Sippy, one of the more restrained Bollywood filmmakers and a man who believes in coolth via understatement, and gargantuan American film studio Warner Brothers, making a much hyped foray into India. The only man I can see completely adore this movie is former cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu, who shares a last name with Kumar's character and might like to hear Kailash Kher [Images] routinely exhort him to greatness. And like on his comedy show, we're not laughing half as hard.
Twinkle bhabhi, please tell Akshay to leave cooking to the others. We'll be fine ordering in some takeout, really.
Verdict:1/5
You know a director is a true master when he can turn shit into dreams.
And if a man can do it twice over, he's a true bloody genius.
In Danny Boyle's 1996 masterpiece Trainspotting, Ewan McGregor's Renton pours himself disgustingly yet poetically through the worst toilet in Scotland for a handful of pills. The search goes from squalid to surreal as the filth is scavenged and the pills found, and for a brief hold-your-breath moment, the film becomes a beautiful ode to joy, before the patently polluted protagonist emerges into harsh reality.
In Slumdog Millionaire [Images], Boyle's latest masterpiece, pint-sized Jamal Malik (played by a marvellous Ayush Mahesh Khedekar) finds himself barricaded inside a messy Mumbai [Images] latrine with all thoughts of his own constipation forgotten in a starry haze. The lord God Amitabh Bachchan [Images] is descending, via helicopter, into the slums for a brief moment, and our irresistible urchin is a huge fan. Images of Coolie dance before his desperate eyes, he briefly contemplates the pile of excrement below, and jumps -- right into the mess.
Standing up like a swamp monster -- only a hundred times more disgusting -- this creature covered in the goo of strangers holds up a picture of his idol and, repeatedly yelling 'Amitabachchan' as one word, makes his way through a frenzied mob, one that backs away at the sight of this scummy fanboy. Renton hunted for a hit while Jamal hunts for the greatest hitmaker in the land, and his triumphant instant of glory -- when we see that mythic left-hand scribble an autograph just for him -- is an immortal one, reminding us just how magical cinema can be.
The film tells us the story of this very Jamal Malik, who at 18 has cleaned up to become a call-center chaiwallah capturing India's imagination by occupying the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? hot-seat with unbelievable accuracy. He seems to know every answer in the book, a fact that leads gleefully smarmy show host Prem to calls the cops on him on charges of cheating. The film thus begins with the cops torturing Jamal, but there is only that much of the saala slumdog they can resist as he spins them his tale, and it truly is a tale of wonder.
*
Also Read: Showcasing Slumdog Millionaire
Loosely based on Vikas Swarup's novel Q&A, Simon Beaufoy's script uses coincidences instead of commas and weaves a grand drama, a fantabulous reality-mocking story, of love and of loss, of survival and of sweethearts. It is a Dickensian tale set in a merciless, mesmerizing city with no time for minor detailing quibbles, with characters speaking not as they naturally would but as the madcap narrative demands, and reality itself breathlessly bending over backwards to accommodate the frenzied energy of Anthony Dod Mantle's disarmingly honest camera. 
Frieda PintoThe ensemble cast is uniformly pitch-perfect. Dev Patel is wonderfully woeful as the grown up Jamal, breaking into a smile only as he answers his final question in the film's climax, but young Khedekar pretty much outshines him as tiny Jamal, while Tanay Chheda's middle Jamal does rather well too.
Jamal's brother Salim is played likewise by a trio of three (chronologically: Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, Ashutosh Lobo Gajiwala and Madhur Mittal), the performances going from strength to strength.
Frieda Pinto's grown up Latika has a wonderful smile, but the true meat of her character's part lies with her youngest version played by Rubiana Ali, while Tanvi Ganesh [Images] Lonkar's middle Latika has the most haunting moments.
Irrfan Khan [Images] seems to be in effortless vein as the police inspector, and it's great to see genuine vim in the eyes of the often-underused Anil Kapoor [Images]. As the show's ebullient host Prem, Kapoor finds nefarious joy in tossing seemingly harmless digs at young Jamal, and the actor sinks his teeth into the part as he masterfully alternates between an on-camera and off-camera persona, ego and arrogance giving way to silken charm soon as the lights are on. He shares a bathroom moment with Patel that leads to inevitable goosepimples -- not once but twice, in the moment itself and its eventual aftermath -- and the performance is a chilling one.
Particularly laudable also, among the film's many revelations, is Ankur Vikal, who plays Maman, the Fagin of this particular tale, a begging-industry villain with a penchant for a particular Krishna bhajan. His character is the film's only absolute baddie, and he plays it stunningly, repulsively well. As for the bhajan itself, Darshan Do Ghanshyaam was penned by Gopal Singh Nepali and not Soordas, as Slumdog tells us.
But then in a world where Millionaire is broadcast live, where Kareena Kapoor [Images] from Yuva [Images] dances when Kareena from Don should, and where little municipal schools feature Alexander Dumas in the syllabus, the tiniest details clearly don't matter. All that does matter is that everybody -- repeat, everybody -- gets up and dances.
And A R Rahman more than sees to that, in his own inimitable way. You'll see. That the director is from farflung Ireland and not right here in Mumbai -- not that you can tell, while watching -- is even more reason to celebrate this film. Grin through the joyous end-credits and pour forth your salutations to this magnificent tale of humanity's hope and hurdles, of the director's Bombaylove and his Bachchanmania, and of Jamal and his ridiculously irresistible heart.
Boylesa'ab, salaam.
Verdict:5/5
Akshay Kumar is good at many things - he has a natural flair for comedy, he performs dare-devil stunts stylishly, he can even be quite charming in romantic roles.
He's never been very good at voice modulation or dubbing though, which is why he wouldn't seem like the perfect choice to voice animation.
In Jumbo, however, the Thai animation film that's been redubbed in Hindi and released this week, Akshay Kumar lends his vocal talent to the older avatar of the film's elephant hero.
Separated from his mother in his youth, Jumbo wanders out of the forest and into the neighboring town Shaktinagar, where he's raised affectionately by the townsfolk, and eventually trained to fight in Prince Vikram's army, where he must face the most feared warrior elephant that ever lived. His rival, in fact, was responsible for the death of his father many years ago.
A typical coming-of-age drama told in a simple, straight style, Jumbo has some respectable animation, but lacks the edge that is required to make it an engaging enough watch. A far cry from those fantastic Hollywood animation films where top stars lend tics and quirks to create distinct characters out of their parts, Jumbo comes across as a rush job in terms of the voice work involved.
Akshay Kumar makes no attempt or effort to do a different voice each for the narrator and the older Jumbo, the two characters he's responsible for voicing. He lends the same deep drone to both characters. Dimple Kapadia as the voice of Devi, Jumbo's doting mother, is similarly uninspired, investing nothing distinct, nothing special to her part. Lara Dutta, voicing Jumbo's love interest - the pink elephant Sonia - is such an insignificant character, she barely registers any impact with her handful of lines.
It's the supporting players - Asrani, Gulshan Grover and particularly Rajpal Yadav - who succeed in making their characters memorable by giving them some meat to chew on.Jumbo has its animation roots in Thailand, and while the animation itself isn't bad, the film as a whole doesn't quite work because there's very little that's funny or original in the dialogue or the characters.
I'll go with two out of five and at best an average rating for Jumbo. Watch it for the spectacular battle scene in the end, it's the film's one big highlight.
Rating: 2 / 5 (Average)
Courtesy:cnn-ibn
