When it comes to Bollywood, perhaps the one thing that leads to high ratings of a movie is a bad review by one or several movie critics. And this has been the scenario for India's most recent cinematic experience, "The Chennai Express."

Both the leading stars, Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone have an attitude of not taking them too seriously. This was offset by the director Rohit Shetty who decided to take the film quite seriously. This worked well for the movie, making it a new gold standard for Bollywood.

One comment shared by most moviegoers is that this was one movie which will leave a historic mark for Shah Rukh Khan, since it meets the expectations for distributors and audiences.

Apart from 3,500 screens in India, the movie was released in countries like Morocco, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Israel, and Peru. These are thought to be unconventional markets for Indian movies, but there is little chance this movie will fail by the way it is performing in theatres now.

Director of the India Theatrical Distribution, Studios, Disney UTV, Gaurav Verma, was quoted as saying, "Chennai Express" is sustaining a high level of audiences around the country.

Verma added, "The film maintained it on the second and the third day, which shows how well it is being accepted and loved by the audiences. This is the only reason why it has successfully created a new benchmark at the box office and will continue to do so."

The common denominator in "Chennai Express" is that it has something for everyone.

  • A sense of clean family humour that audiences can relate to.
  • The charisma of the eloquent SRK, aka Shah Rukh Khan
  • The evolution of Deepika Padukone as a fully fledged actress. This is a highlight for Deepika and her fans, since her film peaked when she looks her best and she was able to nail her role with precision and style. She has now become a phenomenon in the industry.

Film critic, Karthik Kumar was quoted by IANS as saying, "It's an archetypal Rohit Shetty film with lots of fun. You can't expect his films to pique your intellect, can you? It's for the masses and I'm sure they are loving it."

Bollywood fan, Sowmya Iyer said, "I think it's superb movie, which for the first time the director has attempted to make a fusion movie of Tamil and Hindi. It is full of comedy, emotion which we love. Hats off to SRK and Rohit Shetty," reports newkerala.com.