Akshay Kumar said in an interview that Rohan Sippy came to him with just a poster of Akshay wearing a Chinese hat holding two swords in his hands that had vegetables. When asked about the script, the producer did not have one, but was so fascinated with the idea of that poster that he wanted to make a movie on that. This precisely explains why the movie was what it was, where everything was good except that there was no script.

“Chandni Chowk to China” (CC2C) is about, well, Chandni Chowk-based Sidhu (Akshay) who believes he is jinxed and has no luck whatsoever. Things change when two visitors from China think him to be the reincarnation of an ancient warrior, manage to take him to China so that he can save them from a kung fu criminal (Gordon Liu). The potbellied Sidhu under the guidance of an amnesiac wanderer, (an ex-Police chief) who also happens to be the twin Deepika’s-separated-at-birth father (typical Manmohan Desai isshtyle!), learns the art of Kung-fu. What follows is an Indianised amalgamation (and a messy one at that) of Kung Fu Panda and Karate Kid.

After laugh riots like “Singh is Kinng” and “Hera Pheri”, Akki’s comedy sequences in CC2C were not good enough to make us fall off our seats and the fight sequences try to ape a hybrid style between Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee, but fall short. The editing gave the movie a disjointed feel overall – sample this, Tere Naina, though a beautiful song plays through an action sequence! Probably, director Nikhil Advani should reunite with K Jo to retrieve the long lost success of “Kal Ho Na Ho.”....Continue