A 'Slumdog' this one surely is not

If Slumdog Millionaire's success has Hollywood thinking American audiences are ready for the authentic Indian movie experience, Chandni Chowk to China could quickly put the kibosh on that notion.

A sprawling slapstick martial-arts spoof and romantic melodrama laced with song and dance numbers - a typical Bollywood throw-in-the-kitchen-sink spectacle - Chandni Chowk is entertainingly goofy for about 30 minutes. And then, for the next two hours-plus, it's agony.

Akshay Kumar - think Adam Sandler crossed with Sacha Baron Cohen - stars as Sidhu, a lowly vegetable chopper in Chandni Chowk, a market area of Delhi. Two Chinese visitors come along, convinced that Sidhu is actually the reincarnation of an ancient kung fu master, and they enlist him to rid their village of a bowler-hatted bad guy and his gang.

And so Sidhu is off to China, where he runs the Great Wall and runs into the beautiful Indian Sakhi and her vixenish twin, Meow Meow (both played by Deepika Padukone). Although the idea of fusing Bollywood comedy with Chinese martial arts sounds promising, the result is akin to an endless Looney Tunes cartoon, with not terribly PC cultural caricatures thrown into the mix.

Padukone is lovely, there are Ninjas, and our hero sees the likeness of the Hindu god Ganesha on the face of a potato. The potato is a running joke, and the filmmakers run with it like they are in a marathon.