Chandni Chowk to China

Billed as the first Bollywood kung fu action-comedy, Chandni Chowk to China is a joyfully goofy kick. Like 2005's weirdly wonderful Kung Fu Hustle, it's part cartoon, part cornball, and part chop-socky—the kind of movie where a swift boot to the backside sends the recipient skyrocketing to the stratosphere, a clumsy novice can learn mad kung fu skills in no time, and an unarmed hero can conquer an entire outlaw army. Add some dazzlingly elaborate musical numbers, and the result is one exotic dish.

Akshay Kumar stars as Sidhu, a bumblingly simple-minded cook from the Delhi district known as Chandni Chowk. Sidhu's high point in life—if you don't count a winning lottery ticket that went up in flames—consists of finding a potato that bears the image of the elephant god Ganesh. Kumar is alternately slapstick silly and hilariously hammy in the buffoon-makes-good role, like a subcontinental Sacha Baron Cohen with a touch of Adam Sandler.

Two emissaries from China tell Sidhu he is the reincarnation of a long-dead Chinese warrior who must liberate their village from the brutal gangster Hojo (Gordon Liu, possibly best known on this side of the world as Pai Mei in Kill Bill: Volume 2). Unfortunately, Sidhu's shady friend Chopstick (Ranvir Shorey) mistranslates the villagers' request, leaving out the part about having to kill that martial arts master. This makes things a little awkward when Sidhu and Hojo come face to face.

Sidhu's dream girl is Sakhi (Deepika Padukone), a shopping channel star who has her own reasons for going to China. Seems Hojo tossed her policeman dad off the Great Wall 20 years earlier, just before Sakhi and her mother fled to India. What Sakhi doesn't know is that her father survived the fall but lost his faculties…and that her presumed-dead twin sister Suzy has been brought up by Hojo as a very bad kitty nicknamed Meow Meow. Ain't masala melodrama grand?

Padukone, a real-life supermodel, is so breathtakingly alluring that the sight of her dancing in a full-on Bollywood production number is enough to make you forget whoever you used to think was the most beautiful actress in the world. Her appearance is so different in the dual role of Sakhi and Suzy that it's hard to believe she plays both characters, even though both are jaw-droppingly gorgeous.

Director Nikhil Advani does a good job of conveying both the funny and fantasy aspects of Shridhar Raghavan's clever script, which occasionally even kids itself. When Chopstick is weighing advice from an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, Sidhu asks him why he keeps looking from side to side. Later, when Sidhu trips and falls out of frame during a Forbidden City dance number, he reappears holding a banana peel and wonders how it got there.

The movie's fight scenes are choreographed by stunt director Huen Chiu-Ku (The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Kung Fu Hustle), which means lots of high-flying wire work.

At nearly two-and-a-half hours long, the movie risks being too much of a good thing, especially for non-speakers of Hindi or Chinese who aren't keen on subtitles. But Padukone is so lovely, and Kumar so loonily likeable, that Chandni Chowk to China is well worth the trip.

—James Dawson
01.16.09

Kal Ho Naa Ho director Nikhil Advani takes the helm for this tale of mistaken identity concerning a chef who's confused for a dangerous martial arts expert. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi