Brace yourself. It’s Akshay Kumar and Nikhil Advani – the infamous duo of Chandni Chawk to China. And this time they have a formula!
2009 started with a Horror film. One with unimaginable nightmares and that tortured audiences from Chandni Chowk to China and beyond! Nikhil Advani had to go underground, while Akshay Kumar braved it out with another round of disaster films. After all a Khiladi, just gets better at his game – even if the game is of getting worse (remember Blue / Kambakht Ishq )! Meanwhile, somewhere down in the sewers Nikhil Advani seemingly made a movie station and drowned his sorrows by watching innumerable Bollywood blockbusters from the dawn of time! And then he had a brainwave.
He called up the Khiladi and said “I have an amazing script”
Khiladi said “Oh is it?”
Advani went “Yes, let’s do it” Khiladi thought for a nano-second.
Advani blurted out “Got anything better to do?”
Khiladi “Duh! No”
Later ---
Khiladi “So what do I play?”
Advani “You are the Khiladi. Ofcourse, you play!”
Advani then tells his secret formula to success. Inspiration and age old formulas and ofcourse, Cricket. Throw in a bit of jingoism, a bit of racism, oodles of drama and “vallah” a HIT. Khiladi gets excited. “Oo Oo.. N yeah, let’s take a cue from Imtiaz Ali and put a song at the end of the Movie and also let’s take Rishi Kapoor in the film as a Sardar.” Both start brainstorming on one formula after another until they get an intellectual climax! Phew.
So, what is this film about? Well, it’s about a man fighting a battle against racism and his boy fighting against him. Rishi Kapoor is a hard-boiled egg. He has been hardened by the boiling heat of the British intolerance. Now that he is hot and hard – he starts becoming an autocrat. Everyone in South Hall is afraid of him. His children feel shackled. They want to break free. The solution is simple. Akshay the chick, has to play Chicket – oops Cricket to get to Rishi’s yoke! And, boy does he play Cricket… The fight between the chick and the hard-boiled egg, sure leaves your brain scrambled!
Let’s not get into specifics, else I would have to tell you how Akshay manages to get into the English team for what seems to be a T20 World Cup even though he hasn’t played for some 16 years, how Nasseer Hussain, Andrew Symonds, Kieron Pollard humiliate themselves and how easy it is to drop out and then walk into the English team.
What’s more, the movie is undeniably racist. Imagine a film, where a British family comes to India, faces problems, fights through it and then keep calling Indians “brownies!!!” Though Brownie sounds undeniably delicious, Gora certainly doesn’t. In one scene Dimple goes on to state how her child will show the Goras that they are nothing without him!! Yes, Lagaan too had the same premise, but then those were villagers oppressed by the British in their own country. This is 2010 and London. Anyways. Jingosim is India’s formula number forty four!
If you want to go watch Akshay mope around for the first half and the English, Australian team make a fool of themselves in the second, be my guest – go watch the film. And yeah, watch out for Rishi Kapoor coz he is always awesome and Anushka in a saaree, looking positively stunning!
Rating : 4 / 10
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