Chalte Chalte (2003)
Cast: Shahrukh Khan, Rani Mukherji
Director: Aziz Mirza
Music Director: Jatin Lalit, Adesh Srivastva
Synopsis: A disaster of a film that may be the destruction of SRK's Dreamz Unlimited
Reviewed by: Faiz Khan

 

Shah Rukh Khan's stable has a new offering to throw before his hungry fans... except that it's the other way round. His hungry fans may well feel like throwing up at this half-baked pie—far too tempting to resist, yet almost impossible to digest.

You do wonder what on earth must have been going through the minds of Shah Rukh, Juhi Chawla and Aziz Mirza as they sat back and watched the finished product. Could they really have believed that such a hackneyed, contrived piece of work would satisfy audiences? Well, I suppose it will—for about three days. After that, I have little doubt this film will collapse.

The film opens with a group of friends recounting what we are told is the love story of all love stories—that of Raj and Priya—to a newcomer. Apparently, it even surpasses Erich Segal's Love Story.

Raj (Shah Rukh Khan) is a truck driver who once dreamed of becoming an engineer but somehow ended up behind the wheel of a lorry. Do we ever discover why? Nope. Presumably the engineering background is included simply because our hero speaks the Queen's English and therefore needs to be portrayed as educated.

One fine day Priya (Rani Mukerji) overtakes his truck before stopping right in the middle of the road. A thoroughly pathetic argument follows, the sort Asha Parekh used to have with her heroes before inevitably falling in love with them. For our cultured truck driver, however, it is love at first fight.

Why the sophisticated Priya should be remotely attracted to a truck driver from a completely different social background is anybody's guess. Perhaps it's Raj's constant squinting and that familiar trademark smile—both employed here with such relentless overuse that one can almost feel the bile rising every time Shah Rukh attempts to manipulate the audience with yet another bout of simpering and whining.

Ugh.

Anyway, Priya goes off for a drive and a romantic outing with the trucker before returning home practically doing imaginary cartwheels, much to the understandable concern of her aunt (Lillete Dubey). Opposites may attract, but believing in this particular romance stretches credibility well beyond breaking point.

Raj loses track of her once more and promptly brings traffic to a standstill by bursting into song in search of his true love, only to discover that our modern miss has agreed to marry her childhood friend Sameer. Raj pleads his case but Priya remains unmoved and heads off to Greece for her engagement.

Naturally, Raj decides he must follow.

Being a truck driver clearly has its advantages because our hero somehow finds himself travelling First Class to Greece. Or perhaps it was simply a calculated risk. Had Priya been flying Economy, he could always have surrendered his seat in another grand romantic gesture.

A single day in Mykonos with Raj is apparently enough to tug at Priya's heartstrings and she spends the remainder of the engagement moping. Our gallant truck driver hires a car and races her back just in time for the ceremony, an act interpreted as the ultimate proof of love. Priya promptly dumps Sameer, leaps into Raj's waiting arms and, before you know it, the pair are married in Greece.

By now, eighty minutes have elapsed and you begin hoping the film might finally develop into something more substantial than this prefabricated romance assembled with little imagination or originality.

Alas, it does not.

Predictability merely prolongs the agony for another ninety minutes.

By the interval, Raj and Priya have become a permanently bickering married couple. It is their first anniversary and already the marriage appears to be collapsing. But why? As far as the audience can gather, Priya nags because Raj leaves his shirts lying around, fails to put away his shoes and insists on watching television instead of talking to her. Raj complains that Priya nags all the time and... well... actually I have no idea. Apparently his middle-class upbringing has left him with a gigantic chip on his shoulder.

The film lurches endlessly from reconciliation to argument and back again like a yo-yo, generating neither genuine drama nor emotional depth. Of course, we all know the inevitable reconciliation is coming and so we wait... and wait... until the final patch-up eventually arrives in a scene so contrived and cliched that one is left wondering what possessed Shah Rukh Khan to produce and star in such utter drivel.

Yes, Chalte Chalte is an unqualified disappointment, particularly given the expectations surrounding it. Yet even viewed in isolation it offers nothing remotely fresh, either in story or execution. Aziz Mirza has described it as a film without a plot and, to some extent, he is correct. The problem is that wafer-thin stories can still produce wonderful films if handled with sufficient charm and sensitivity.

Chalte Chalte possesses neither.

For a film of this scale, starring one of Hindi cinema's biggest romantic pairings, it is astonishingly devoid of warmth, charm and emotional conviction. Instead, Shah Rukh's familiar mannerisms are wheeled out time and again in the hope of extracting an emotional response from the audience. The manipulation is so transparent—and so ineffective—that one is left feeling almost embarrassed by how shallow and vapid the entire exercise becomes.

Surely we have moved on from this sort of tripe. This is the era of polished films like Lagaan, Dil Chahta Hai, Raaz, Deewangee and even Humraaz. Chalte Chalte comes dangerously close to joining the ranks of Dil Ka Rishta. It stops short of descending quite that low but, frankly, there is precious little to distinguish the two.

Aziz Mirza's uninspired direction may yet prove the downfall of Dreamz Unlimited. The film plods along at a painfully slow pace and, despite inevitable comparisons with Saathiya, evokes almost none of that film's freshness apart from one obvious scene between the lead pair. If anything, it more closely resembles Akele Hum Akele Tum in its portrayal of a man crippled by insecurity and ego. Comparisons may indeed be odious but Akele Hum Akele Tum is streets ahead in both emotional depth and dramatic conviction.

Shah Rukh once again plays... Shah Rukh, albeit even more mannered than usual. His drunken scene is perhaps the one exception, largely because he temporarily abandons his trademark histrionics and appears unusually vulnerable. Rani Mukerji looks lovely but is badly let down by an underwritten role. The characters themselves remain frustratingly one-dimensional.

Where this pair sparkled in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham..., their first full film together ought to have produced fireworks.

Instead...

...the magic simply never materialises.

Musically, the film passes muster but the songs are unlikely to linger long in the memory. Surprisingly, even Farah Khan's choreography feels disappointingly routine. Ashok Mehta's cinematography is magnificent and the Greek locations are beautifully photographed.

But what does any of that matter when it ultimately adds up to so very little?

Aishwarya Rai must have been having the last laugh.