Chandni Chowk to China

Really, what the hell was I thinking?

We thought we'd go for Slumdog Millionaire, but when we realised the movie hadn't released at the theatre near us, we should have just had dinner and come home. But, no. We decided we had to do something on a Friday night and ended up whacking our heads in frustration over one of the most awful movies known to mankind - Chandni Chowk to China.

True I'm a new addition to the movie-watching club. True I don't know art from fart. True I have no idea how to critically assess the essence of technical virtuosity of bla di da in visual effects. But I sure as hell know this is not a movie to watch.

It's a movie that goes from nowhere to everywhere. A reincarnation of the great Chinese warrior Liu Sheng is born as a vegetable cutter with a Mangal Pandey handlebar mustache - a man who only knows how to cut potatoes, but loves Luck so much she decides to give him a miss everytime. Until he's cheated by a fake soothsayer called Chopstick (what???) and shipped to China. Among all the mish mash appears a perpetually weepy heroine who cries even when she's happy. For that matter, there's a lot more crying in this movie and it's not just from the audience who have by now wished they'd strangled the director. EVERYONE cries. And it's supposed to be a funny movie. Whatever happened to comedy?

The songs are terribly unbearable. Lyrics unworthy of nursery rhymes and seasoned actors 'acting' like they are drama school rejects. Some poor soul decides to get himself killed to take the script forward and incite the potato-cutter to learn Shaolin kung-fu in revenge. So eventually, the vicious skilled Chinese kung-fu villain is defeated by a vegetable chopper from Chandni Chowk. And so the story goes on to the happy ending of reuniting part-Chinese identical twins with their Chinese father who knows kung-fu and the subsequent opening of a Dehli-ishtyle food cart right near the Great Wall. Chop chop.

Any saving grace? Hell, no. Even the crowd in the cinema hall consisted of college-going adolescent boys complete with dry comments and gelled hair. Now, where's my lawyer?