I don’t hate Rohit Shetty’s films.* They’re largely inoffensive, unlike Sajid Khan’s aggressively terrible movies, and have a sweetness and eagerness to please that I can appreciate. Shetty also repeatedly uses a little group of funny character actors that includes women, who are rarely allowed to be funny anymore in mainstream Hindi films, and these performers go a long way to camouflage the stiffness of his favored leading man, Ajay Devgn. Furthermore, his gaze seems to be more respectful of the female leads in his films than many other mainstream filmmakers’.
I can’t quite recommend Shetty’s work, though. His films are generally short on any sort of narrative, and depend, instead, on a series of skits and gags and numerous action interludes that involve cars blowing up. Now, if all the gags were funny, the absence of a cohesive plot wouldn’t really be a problem. But the jokes, too, are hit-and-miss, and staged inconsistently. The actors usually flail wildly from physical comedy to melodrama pitched at an absurdly jarring level and directed with tone-deaf ineptitude. The lines in his films, too, seem to have been written by someone with a tin ear. Also, Shetty rarely demonstrates an eye for song sequences or even much general visual flair. He loves a big group dance number, but the songs aren’t memorable, the choreography often limp (except when the amazing Arshad Warsi does it.)
So I was surprised when, by the end of Chennai Express, the director’s latest film left me pretty damn impressed. Many people have lamented its record-breaking success, complaining that it’s just another action-comedy potboiler, the type of film often referred to as “mindless” or “leave-your-brains-at-home” in Indian film reviews. The thing is, Chennai Express, while not a path-breaker or game-changer, or even a particularly great film, is not quite like many of those other movies. It is actually made with care and some thought. For one, there is a narrative (and it’s fairly silly, but it keeps chugging along), and there are character arcs, and gradual growth. You understand why the protagonists do what they do, and why they need to be put in the situations they are put in. Rahul needs to grow up, not run away from his problems, and stop being a man-child. Meena goes along with Rahul because she’s initially amused by him and eventually falls for him. (The film doesn’t tell us this in a heavy-handed, out-of-nowhere scene when it’s convenient; We see it. The excellent Deepika Padukone, in a series of moments, telegraphs beautifully her growing fondness for her companion.) The lead actor is actually right for the part, and doesn’t grunt or posture through the film. The lead female is not a prop who is trotted out for songs. She gets to be funny and spunky, and she gets to save the day (and the guy) several times. And the guy doesn’t get to be the Hero all the way through. He’s not the garden-variety macho rascal who reforms and gets tough with the goons just in time for the fight scenes. He’s an ordinary dude who sucks at hitting on women, sucks at being a responsible grandson, and sucks at being brave. He whimpers in fear, he calls attention to his own lack of height and heft in comparison to the Herculean antagonist, he gets shown up by the people he insults or makes fun of again and again. (The Tamil people in the movie are rarely the passive butt of jokes; they’re actually painted much more sympathetically than the “Northern” protagonist. Impressively, Shetty has the Tamil folk speak Tamil instead of the awful accented Hindi that Deepika is saddled with but works around as gracefully as possible.)
Also, in one of my favorite moments, Meena jibes that Rahul must be at least fifty. Can you imagine any other mainstream over-forty superstar who’d gamely take all this? I’m not an SRK-super-fan. I love several of his films, but others leave me cold, and his performances are part of why. I thought Don 2, while stylish, was odious, and SRK’s performance a flamboyant miscalculation. Ra. One, or what I could stomach of it, was embarrassing. But SRK is winning here. He’s down with making fun of himself, a quality the lead in a comedy must possess. He’s willing to lampoon his star image. He’s willing to hide behind the girl, run away from a fight, sound less than hyper-masculine all the time. The emphasis here, at least until the last twenty or so minutes, is not, surprisingly enough, on being a MAN, but being a decent person. Even in the problematic climactic sequence, where (spoiler) Rahul fights Thangabali (Nikitin Dheer) for Meena’s hand while she watches helplessly, restrained by her father, is at least consistent with what we’ve seen of Rahul so far. He wins the fight not because he’s suddenly stronger than his much larger opponent. Thangabali still gets in the most punches. Rahul wins because he just won’t stop, and he’ll keep going, and he’s just clever enough to land a couple strategic blows. I’m not saying it’s a realistic fight sequence. It doesn’t need to be, in a film that is gleefully, unabashedly filmi right from the get-go. But Rahul’s victory seems grounded in what we’ve learned of the character and what we’ve seen of his growth.
One of the reasons I can’t stand many of the big star vehicles put out by the over-40 male brigade is the curiously humorless machismo, the braying self-importance, they bring to those films. There’s a refreshing self-awareness to SRK’s brand of humor that leavens the proceedings in Chennai Express, and Rohit Shetty’s over-the-top style is quite right for the actor’s more hammy tendencies.
And it’s a hamfest of a movie. The background score rings loud and dramatic throughout, characters have dumb catchphrases, and everyone, each expression writ large on his or her face, often yells lines instead of, you know, just saying them. But the film never becomes leaden or overbearing, because it keeps moving, for one, and because a lot of it is actually quite funny (the DDLJ scene and the device with the Hindi songs had me doubling up), and because the love story that blooms along the protagonists’ journey, and the film’s, is charming and convincing. Shetty directs the romantic portions with an unexpectedly light touch, and the SRK and Deepika have an easy, believable way with each other. Also helping are the gorgeously filmed songs. Titli is a stunner, and Deepika Padukone shows here why she is suddenly Bollywood’s sweetheart. I’ve realized that Deepika has a particular gift of managing to look wonderfully lovestruck, and when, as she is dancing in elaborate costume, Khan suddenly wraps himself around her, the look on her face is priceless. Kashmir Main Tu Kanyakumari pulsates with color and genial energy, while even the mandatory item number goes happily for comedy instead of raunch in its fun choreography.
In fact, the whole film has a visual dynamism that many mainstream masala-comedy filmmakers sadly do away with. It feels like a big film, with its large-scale songs and its sweeping shots and its use of color and its gorgeous sets and costumes and scenery. None of the camerawork is particularly innovative, and some of the green-screen work is pretty shoddy, but the money does show on-screen. It’s amply clear that this isn’t merely a vanity project where most of the budget was eaten up the male star’s fee. The people behind the film haven’t just put their big-name hero front and center and lazily thrown together a movie around him. I didn’t once get, “Eh, it’s a Shahrukh movie with Rohit Shetty, we’ll just make whatever and they’ll eat it up” from Chennai Express. I could discern a sustained effort to make an actual motion picture – a frequently foolish, lightweight trifle of a motion picture, for sure, but one that has genuine emotional beats and looks good and tells a story. You don’t feel insulted by Chennai Express. It may be “brainless” comedy, but it has been made with some thought and some cleverness. And that just might explain why Chennai Express, instead of being a quick-kill blockbuster with a big opening weekend and zero legs, ran long and merry.
*I remember legitimately enjoying the first Golmaal, and Bol Bachchan, despite its casual homophobia, has a crackerjack Abhishek performance. Golmaal 3, too, has its moments.
