We’ve been waiting to see Chandni Chowk to China since first laying eyes on the teaser trailer that promised to blend India with Hong Kong to make the first ever Hindi kung fu comedy. Now that it’s playing in U.S. theaters nationwide, thanks to co-producer Warner Bros., how does it hold up?

It doesn’t quite live up to its promise, as it turns out. It doesn’t so much blend the two film styles as plop them down side by side to form a decidedly uneven movie.

In the first half, we’re introduced to Sidhu, a lovable loser who makes a living chopping vegetables in the crowded street of Chandni Chowk, Delhi. In one of those strange twists of fate, he’s mistaken for the reincarnation of an ancient Chinese hero by villagers desperate to free their home from the murderous Hojo, played by Gordon Liu.

(Liu might be the most familiar face in the movie to Western audiences. For Kill Bill, the Chinese martial arts actor was tapped by an admiring Quentin Tarantino to play both the leader of the Crazy 88 and The Bride’s kung fu instructor, Pai Mei. Even at his age, he makes a convincing badass.)
 

Sidhu’s scheming half-Chinese friend, Chopstick, acts as a translator for the villagers, but neglects to tell Sidhu that they want him to kill a terrifying gangster who decaptitates people with his hat. Antics ensue.

Without spoiling anything, eventually Sidhu has to man up, learn martial arts and fight the bad guy. It’s formulaic, but it’s a good formula, and it’s the best part of the movie.

The kung-fu half of Chandni Chowk to China is a lot of fun, even by the standards set by the films that inspired it. Somehow when the star of the film does his own fight scenes, and the editor doesn’t ruin it with excessive jump cuts, it makes everything a hundred times better, as moviegoers discovered with the original Matrix. The fight choreography is by Huan-Chiu Ku, whose work you may have seen in Stephen Chow’s martial arts comedy Kung Fu Hustle.

The problem is, the first half of the movie that leads up to the martial arts… well, it’s a big old mess.

The pace drags and drags, with multiple redundant flashbacks breaking up the action. The plot twists become more and more improbable, stretching the bounds of belief. Most of the jokes fall flat, a hash made of their timing and delivery. The characters go through their paces, but don’t connect with the audience.

I thought the problem might be me being unfamiliar with the movie’s conventions. When you see a Hindi film, you expect to get your money’s worth as far as length goes. However, googling around for reviews on Indian film blogs, at least ones I can read in English, seems to indicate the problem is cross-cultural. The first half just doesn’t hold up. I never really got behind Sidhu until the second half when the movie changed gears and he recieved his driving motivation.

It’s not all bad. There’s a genuinely great comedy scene in an airplane, for one thing. The music is good, and the soundtrack is catchy enough that one of the members of my moviegoing group bought the soundtrack. (The album could use more meat, though. Out of eight songs, three are remixes or instrumental versions of other tracks.)

It’s not an awful movie, but neither is it a great one. People looking to get their first taste of Hindi comedies could probably find something more solid with a little digging, though I’m not the person to be giving those receommendations. I can say, however, people who want to see a kung-fu comedy would be better served going directly to the source, perhaps Netflixing some of Stephen Chow’s back catalog.

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