Chandni Chowk to China

A buffoonish vegetable chopper in the Chandni Chowk district of Delhi, India (Akshay Kumar), is mistaken for the reincarnation of a legendary Chinese warrior and persuaded to help liberate a desperate Chinese village from its cruel criminal overlord (Gordon Liu). Director Nikhil Advani’s film is a bizarre, clodhopping hybrid of slapstick comedy, Bollywood musical and martial-arts revenge epic, so energetically off-the-wall that the sheer novelty alone makes it entertaining much of the way. But Advani doesn’t know when to stop—he repeats some scenes as many as three or four times—and his movie wears out its welcome well before its 2 hours 34 minutes are up. Kumar bears a passing resemblance to John Turturro, but he has a penchant for obnoxious mugging that brings to mind Italy’s Roberto Benigni.