How to put this politely? It’s a big, fat bore. A bloated vanity project for an actor capable of so much more.

The laughs came intermittently through the first half, and I was still sitting in my seat at the interval. And then it turned into the same old story : the plot, which was thinner than a self-respecting wafer to start with, just gives up and dies, and the lead pair, Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone stop talking to each other and begin posturing. They have no competition from anything else : the trademark Shetty bang bang –car chases, jeeps blowing up, large groups of people charging at each other—is by now more eye glaze than ever.

He’s on a high, jumping-jackflashin’, jibing and jousting, picking up a sickle as if it was bottled pickle, all in a desperate bid to tickle your funny bone. Sorry, except for a few stray laugh-out-loudish moments, here’s a bad trip. Shah Rukh Khan springs no surprises, re-rendering every old trick in the acting book. Indeed, it’s disheartening to see him overact. Gratifyingly, Deepika Padukone sparkles: consistently radiant and restrained in the mayhem.

Chennai Express is, in a way, full circle for Deepika Padukone as she — enervated by box-office success and increasingly self-aware as an actress — holds up her end of the film far better, and more consistently than her leading man. She makes an effort; he makes faces. And he’s never seemed more at sea.

So it breaks my heart to tell you that Chennai Express left me cold. This hyper, eager-to-please Rahul sorely tested my patience. And after a while, the innumerable references to DDLJ seemed like a lazy shot at siphoning some of the enduring affection we have for that film.

The fault is not so much with the director Rohit Shetty as it is with the writer Yunus Sajawal. If you see Sajawal saab’s filmography, it will boggle your mind – Rascals, Do Knot Disturb, Tom, Dick, Harry, God Tussi Great ho and many other travesties are credited to him.

Given the trailer, viewers in the theatre will probably look out for two things: lots of crackerjack humour, equal amounts of earth-shaking, gravity-defying assault on human bodies, cars, jeeps, and even the train. Throughout, at least I couldn’t spot a single moment that had me even mildly chuckling. The stunts and car-nage is limited to two sequences, which is a small fraction for a film that clocks over 140 minutes. So should you feel cheated, sitting in this loud, chugging train to Chennai? Perhaps.

An individual opinion in such critic-proof films is like a smashed up secondary car in a Rohit Shetty convoy: it amuses momentarily. Deepika Padukone is perhaps the best reason to watch this movie and her absurd accent only adds to her charm. Of course it only works when the dialogue is comical. Imagine how everything derails when she talks like that in emotional scenes. As for Shah Rukh Khan, one hopes he smashes all box office records so that he may take a moment and consider doing a film along the lines of a Kabhi Haan, Kabhi Naa, Swades, or a Chak De. Films that were not about the math.