Originally published August 12, 2013.
I saw Chennai Express today. Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone were in this, and Rohit Shetty directed it. The director has a string of hits behind his name, and the 2 actors past collaboration ushered in success commercially and critically. So the question would be, is this film gonna be a big hit or an enormous hit? However, the movie is gonna be between those 2 choices. But the movie is not bad, when watching this I was truly entertained and while this movie gets a bit predictable at times, and the ending could have been better, it was a good summer time film.
Its basically about a guy whose grandpa passed away and instead of taking his ashes and putting them in the Rameshwara river, he plans on going to Goa with his friends. Course he doesn’t want his family knowing that he’s doing this so he takes the Chennai express which will stop at at a station where he and his friends can meet and go to Goa, but that doesn’t happen. That’s all you really need to know.
The performances were good Shah Rukh Khan plays an insecure fool trying to be a hero….again! But he does a decent job with it. Deepika, while its not her best performance, I thought did an above average job. Certainly the best performance in the film, in my opinion.
The script is not that bad for a summer movie. The direction however could’ve been better, Shetty tries to squeeze 3 or more songs in the last 30 min. Even though I didn’t find it too distracting and the songs were good, I just didn’t think he needed to put all those songs in those last 30 mins. Its almost like he wanted to make the film longer and the only way he could do it was to add more songs. Also in the ending Shah Rukh Khan gives a speech to Deepika’s father, the speech should’ve held a significance with her father and actors should’ve hugged it out and the end. Butttttt NO… to please the fans they had a huge 10 min fight scene in which only after did the father understand the significance of the speech. I thought that was a bit foolish and unnecessary. But aside from that I had a good time and enjoyed myself which is what a summer time movie should do.
