'Chalo Dilli' could be easily missed

Film: Chalo Dilli (U)
Director: Shashant Shah
Cast: Lara Dutta, Vinay Pathak, Gaurav Gera
Rating:*
 
The title of this film doesn’t leave any scope for suspense about the plot. Yet, one cannot help but be intrigued as to how an unconventional jodi like Pathak and Dutta could carry the entire film on their shoulder.

The news, good or bad we can’t decide, is that Pathak carries the entire film on his shoulder while Dutta falters in her six-inch designer heels.
 
The film has no real story and doesn’t exactly weave a gripping plot within its premise. Behenji (Dutta) is a regular on magazine covers, in boardrooms and seems like a total control freak with a disdain for all things ‘unposh’.

While she’s heading to Dilli to meet her husband, we get an impression that it is an unhappy marriage with the weary tone of Behenji’s voice. Anyhoo, she crosses paths with Bhaisahab (Pathak) a clumsy, garish Chandni Chowk-Karol Bagh person who gets on Behenji’s nerves quite easily (not that the task is supremely difficult).

The story is predictable. Dutta misses her flight, gets on a budget airline, flight gets diverted, so on and so forth. You already know that for the film to go further everything must go wrong for Behenji and Bhaisahab must jump in and join the joyride.

There’s a sleepy cranky driver, a dhabawala, an honest TC, a Dabangg style gang of goons who have no clue what they’re doing, a set of rowdy politicos and an item number. Amid all this, the film is devoid of any element of surprise.
 
The director cleverly hides the protagonists’ names, having them address each other as Bhaisahab and Behenji. The only other factor that holds any suspense is who plays Behenji’s possessive and protective husband.

The background of her marriage remains largely unexplained but by the time we are three quarters into the film, we see Behenji transform from a high-flying career woman informing her husband for the sake of informing to a complete damsel in distress who pleads with him to rescue her.
 
Since there isn’t much of a plot, a film like Chalo Dilli relies heavily on dialogue, characters and performances and it fails on most of those counts. While the dialogue manages to induce faint murmur of laughter in parts, Dutta’s performance fails to deliver Behenji, a character that itself seems confused from the get go.

While she’s a head honcho with an elephant-sized ego, is she heartless? We are not quite sure. Is she devoid of love and warmth, again, we do not know. But what Dutta and her character lack, Pathak makes up for with his gutkha-chewing, clumsy yet endearing Bhaisahab.
 
The first half is passable as the quirks and predictable yet funny situations entertain you in bits. The second half, however, is the downfall of the film as the director tries to pack in as many ‘fun’ and ‘entertaining’ elements as he can. The film — which in my humble opinion, should have ended at the interval — goes on and on, with item numbers, goons and a macho husband thrown in.

Just as you pick your bags to leave, there is a melodramatic revelation about Bhaisahab whose name, we now know, is Manu Gupta. The cherry on the cake is a verbal explanation of Manu’s Takiya Kalaam ‘Kaunsi Badi Baat Ho Gayi?’.

As much as we enjoyed the first half, the second half went from bland to mundane to unbearable. Even a superstar guest appearance and a skimpily dressed Yana Gupta fail to make the EXIT signs unattractive.
 
Chalo Dilli is a confused cocktail of Jab We Met, Bheja Fry, Dabangg and Delhi 6 with an item number thrown in. With a so-so first half and a disastrous second half, Chalo Dilli could be easily missed.