I suffered a tremendous feeling of shock, abandonment and sadness while watching this film and makes me wonder about a lot of things. Although this is not a review that will be released this friday, it is this week's released review, which means that this friday, there is no review going to be released. Chennai Express is a 2013 Hindi Action Comedy film that revolves around a North Sweet Seller named Rahul Mithaiwala (Portrayed by Shahrukh Khan), who comes from Mumbai. Post his grandfather's death, his grandmother has asked him to go to Rameshwaram, a small city in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu to immerse his ashes. As Rahul is hesitant on going to Rameshwaram and immersing his ashes, he secretly makes a plan to go to Goa with his friends to party. However, as he misses his train due to helping a South Indian girl named Meenalochani Azhagusundaram (Portrayed by Deepika Padukone), who is also known as Meenamma, hails from a village in Tamil Nadu called Komban. along with helping four other goons. Meenamma is expected to marry Tangaballi (Portrayed by Nikitin Dheer) by her father, Durgeshwara Azhagusundaram (Portrayed by Sathyaraj), a don who is powerful in his village. However, Meenamma does not want to marry Tangaballi and ran away from marrying him. Rahul has to save her from this marriage and fight for Meenamma's freedom. Shahrukh Khan was good as usual. He shows us how a North Indian would normally behave when in South India, especially Tamil Nadu. In Tamil Nadu, people will like you if you speak Tamil. If you don't, you face a lot of discrimination and will get a lot of degrading comments that can really hurt the sentiments of other people from most Tamil locals in that state. So, I was not affected by his performance that much. To a certain extent, I was affected by Deepika Padukone's performance. She is a South Indian herself. But, her performance did look like she was stereotyping South Indians and she supported it. Though she may say she is not spoofing South Indian people, it did look like she was, especially Tamilians. I did love her half-sarees and hairstyles and jewellery though! Manish Malhotra did a good job for the costumes for Deepika's character! :) Sathyaraj and all the other South Indian actors did what they had to do and honestly, they did not have much to do in the film. More than Sathyaraj, Nikitin Dheer had a bigger part to play in this film. He was the main villain in this film as his character was someone who would marry Deepika at any cost, in this film at least. So, nothing much to say actually. The comedy in this film was a flop. Rather, this film sparked a lot of negative sentiments of Indians, particularly South Indians. What was worse is the fact that this film was inspired from 2003 Telugu film Okkadu, just to make it a South Indian masala film and to make South Indians feel accepted and all of that. Well, if Bollywood wants to accept South India, show the true beauty and learn from Baaghi, The Dirty Picture and Alone (2015 Horror Hindi film). Now, the music, which was composed by Vishal-Shekhar, was fine as South Indian music is mostly full of masala and melody. Since the film is a masala action comedy film based down South, there has to be some South Indian instruments used in the music. Although I hated the film, I did appreciate the music very much as a whole though. You can definitely dance to the film's item song, 1 2 3 4! Now, what exactly offended me in this film was the fact that Tamilians think that those who speak Tamil are considered Indians, which is again, true from personal experiences. One scene in the film of Tamil policemen assumes Shahrukh Khan to be a smuggler just because he travels with Tamil drug addicts. When he tries to explain himself that he is not a drug smuggler in Hindi, the Tamil policemen do not believe him. However, when he says he knows people from Tamil Nadu, then the Tamil policemen will say that he is Indian just because he knows Tamil people. I mean, this scene was especially offensive to me as the scene looked like North Indians, Bengalis, Marathi-speaking people and Gujaratis are not considered Indians just because we do not know anyone who is a Tamil native or we do not speak Tamil. This scene was disgusting as hell. It just sparks racism amongst Indians. Another thing that made me uncomfortable with this film was the fact that at least 50% of the dialogues are in Tamil. First of all, most of the audience of Bollywood are those residing out of Tamil Nadu. Secondly, most of us do not know Tamil. Why put so many Tamil dialogues? I felt uncomfortable with this film as I do not know Tamil and that there were so many Tamil dialogues that would make people think what are people saying. It is ok to put basic Tamil words such as "Amma", "Appa", "Aiyyo Rama", "Illai" and all. We have no problem of Hindi and Tamil fusion. Like in Singham (2011), characters in the film would use some Marathi words and mix it with Hindi words in their sentences so as to not make the North Indian audiences feel left out with too much Marathi. Also, with a little Marathi words in the film once in a while, it also makes the film believable that it is set in Maharashtra and Goa or that the characters are really Marathi natives, though keeping in mind that the film is a Hindi film. We are ok with a few regional language words being fused with Hindi. See, there is nothing wrong with making your story set base in South India. One example of a Bollywood film set in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, South India is The Dirty Picture (2011). Vidya Balan is the main lead of the film, who portrays a South Indian actress named Silk Smitha. However, that film did not have too many Tamil Dialogues as the director, Milan Luthria, knows that the North Indian audience will feel left out and not acknowledged. The way Vidya Balan ate Idlis and Vadais at the start makes me feel so hungry that I want to binge on them! Another Hindi film that was set base in South India is Baaghi (2016). The story was set in Kerala, South India, and the film showed a lot of things that actually represents the state's beautiful culture. From Kalaripayattu to Kathakali to Thirayattam... This film actually shows the true beauty of South India, which made me appreciate the true beauty of South India rather than the dumb film Chennai Express. The villanous character, Raghav Shetty (Portrayed by Sudheer Babu), is a South Indian. However, he is an Urban South Indian guy and did not have that stereotypical South Indian accent when he speaks, but rather, he sounds North Indian and adapted to both North and South Indian characters in the film, which helps to break South Indian stereotypes in India. After seeing this film, I can see why many people hate it. It is racist towards South Indians, especially Malayalis, which fuels up more racism in India. See, Nobody will have a problem if a Hindi film's plot is based in South India and a lot of South India's culture is shown. That is a good way of embracing other cultures and making them accepted. But then, over-exaggerating and stereotyping is just wrong. I am not surprised if Deepika won a lot of Best Actress awards just for mocking non-Tamil South Indians with that strong Tamil accent. I would have understood if she won Best Actress for Race 2 or Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani... But after seeing award ceremonies in 2014, I feel disgusted. I feel that racism in India is just increasing and it is disgusting. Even Baaghi shows North Indian characters who embraces the culture of South India way better than Chennai Express did. Should I watch it?
Whether you are a South Indian or not, DO NOT DARE WATCH THIS FILM! This is Rohit Shetty's most disgusting direction compared to Singham, Singham Returns and All The Best! This is probably Deepika's worst film selection to star in. There are so many films of Deepika Padukone there are much better than this pile of crap in Chennai Express. Although Deepika looked gorgeous in this film! And this is also one of Shahrukh's worst decisions. He is such an amazing actor, I do not understand why he feels the need to do such racist, idiotic and ignorant films. I miss the old Shahrukh Khan. If you ask me which Shahrukh films to watch, I would suggest those in the 1990s. If you do not believe me that this film is a disgrace to South Indians, read the interview linked here on Quora.
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