Chandni Chowk to China - Movie Review

Published: July 17, 2009

By JENNIFER HOPFINGER

Starring Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Mithun Chakraborty, Ranvir Shorey

One has to wonder what the execs at Warner Brothers were thinking when they decided on this film to be the company’s first Bollywood movie—and the third Hindi film to be released in North America by a Hollywood studio, following Sony’s Saawariya (2007) and Disney’s animated Roadside Romeo (2008). Perhaps their flawed logic was this: Americans like kung fu movies, so let’s use kung fu to introduce them to another kind of Asian film. But if you want Americans to get acquainted with Bollywood, then show them a Bollywood movie, with all its distinct and wonderful characteristics, not a kung fu movie in Hindi with Indian actors (and a bad kung fu movie at that).

The story follows a dimwit named Sidhu (played by Akshay Kumar), a vegetable-chopper in the Chandni Chowk neighborhood of Delhi, who longs for a different life and is always consulting astrologers and fortune tellers with the hope that something better awaits him. But he never does anything to actually improve his lot, despite the urging of his foster father, Dada (Mithun Chakraborty). One day, two strangers from China tell Sidhu he’s the reincarnation of an ancient Chinese warrior and he goes to China to fulfill his destiny, with his translator, Chopstick (Ranvir Shorey), as his sidekick.

There, he encounters twins, Sakhi and Suzy—one good, one evil (both played by Deepika Padukone)—and a vagrant, Chiang (Roger Yuan), who lost his memory and turns out to be a former police chief and the father of the twins. Sakhi is a model, who believes her father is dead. Suzy works for a villain named Hojo (Gordon Liu), who’s terrorizing a village, and Sidhu learns martial arts so he can vanquish him.

This ridiculous hybrid flopped at the box office for good reason.

Chandni Chowk to China is rated Skip.

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