From the opening in Goa, this seems to be a film about the relentlessly meaningless problems of the entitled, the rich, the decadent, and the pointless. That is, the fat-cat parasites who live in lavish settings in the resort city of Goa, India. Gambling seems to be one of the main tools for separating fools from their money. As the film progresses one sees other means of separating the money: exotic dancers, gigolos, corruption in the film industry, and so on. Playboy/gigolo Rocky seems to be at the center of everything; we'll see how long that lasts. He seems to enjoy staying with Sonia Chang at 36 China Town, the address/name of her mansion.Meanwhile, in Mumbai, Raj made a music video which a director likes. However, he blew his savings making it, and no longer has the 1 million he needs to bribe the director to get a lead role. Priya thought she had a boyfriend interested in marrying her. Instead, he wants from her father a couple of million to start a business; if the business goes well, perhaps another million will lead to a marriage.Priya and Raj (after a rocky start) 'adopt' a missing child in order to collect a 2.5 million reward. They just have to travel to Goa to collect it from the child's putative mother, Mrs. Sonia Chang. Unfortunately for them, the ultra-wealthy Sonia gets murdered 60 minutes into the film.An alternate thread follows two hopeless gamblers through their ups and downs. Major losses, good-sized wins, bad blows to family fortunes are detailed. Sounds like possible homicide motives.Priya and Raj find 36 China Town. The lights are dim and the doors unlocked. Bad signs? They go in anyway. They discover the body. They call in the murder anonymously, but Raj gets apprehended by Inspector Karan when he goes back to the scene. He manages for a bit to keep Priya and the baby out of it.Meanwhile, one of the gamblers finds body parts in one of his suitcases. Great stuff. Priya gets noticed, then arrested. The gambler and his wife get arrested when the body parts are discovered. Karan sorts things out. He finds the other gambler and asks to talk to his wife as well. Ah, the construction of lies is such a convoluted thing! Kana arrests the second gambler as well.Kana lets his seven suspects go, and tells them not to leave Chinatown's Silver Jubilee.Lovely ending. Three stars goes to four.------Scores-------Cinematography: 8/10 Pleasant to the eye for the most part. The reverse video passages seem both needless and repellent.Sound: 4/10 Yikes, major problems here. First, the subtitles are absent in passages. Second, where they are present, they tend to be sixty or so frames lagging behind the video. Third, conversations tend to have the hollow sound associated with badly miked actors.Acting: 7/10 Reasonable. Liked the performance of Akshaye Khanna, as I did in Aap Ki Khatir.Screenplay: 7/10 Needs compression. The story does move along, but has too much filler.Musical Numbers: 7/10 Mixed bag. The single biggest reason I watch Bollywood films is the presence of good musical numbers. The dancing, the vibrant singing, the frequent humor, and the good-hearted silliness are a treat. In this film, though, there is way too much use of audio filters that cancel out the quality of full frequency singing. The filtering delivers castrated mush; the usual richness is defeated. It's like dropping back to 1960s audio quality. Some of the later ones were better.

SHAREENA. Shahid and Kareena Kapoor that is. This overwrought over-zealous over-polished Faux attempt at the famed British whodunit genre would have swept the house at Hollywood's Razi awards but since it's Bollywood, an industry that does not (well at least at the time of this review) have an award show that gives out accolades for the worst performances like Hollywood does the night before the Oscars.36 Chinatown weaves the tale of a missing child, his murdered mother, two gold digging teenyboppers, a handsome playboy and two other couples in circles around one another as drawn by a police inspector (Akshaye Khanna in one of his most dashing and sinful hot roles yet). Khanna takes the cake, I mean honestly if only they could have edited Shareena out of the picture, the film might have been a masterpiece lead by the very confident and professional Khanna. Not to mention supported by the very hilarious Johnny Lever & Paresh Rawal who turn in decent performances. Oh! and what's up with Piggy Chops? Priyanka Chopra that is? She seems to be doing a lot of cameos lately. Blink and you'll miss her appearance as Khanna's very sexy wife. Upen Patel makes his Bollywood debut as the heart breaker Rocky. Apart from the songs, you might want to skip this Chinatown.

36 China Town is promoted as a 'Whodunnit' kinda thriller film with suspects lined up and the stage set for a master detective to enter and unravel a suspense mystery..........my advice to the promoters is : GO TO HELL.The film passes off as acceptable merely on the basis of some good acting and Reshammiya's Midas Touch over Hindi music. The film hardly thrills and is more of a brainless comedy than a potboiler. The climax sucks to the core and there is no intelligent unraveling of mysteries. Bollywood is still in the infant stage in the arena of suspense-thrillers and a few good ones that have been made so far , like Samay (Sushmita Sen,2003) never got an encouraging response.ACTING: The only good thing that can be said about 36,China Town is the above average acting. Shahid Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor, though still young in Hindi cinema, act with maturity and share impressive on-screen chemistry (the couple are known love-birds off-screen too!). Debutant Upen Patel is pure eye-candy but still needs to brush up his acting. Yet another down-point of the film is that Upen's voice has been dubbed and the lip-sync is imperfect. Paresh Rawal and Johny Lever do gross injustice to their comic talent; though as an afterthought, there are certain hilarious scenes in the film. Akshaye Khanna once again delivers a great performance. Its sad that after some damn good performances like Dil Chahta Hai, Border, Humraaz and this one, the actor is still not sure of his place in Hindi cinema. Payal Rohatgi and Tanaaz Lal complete the acting cast. Payal would be better off displaying her wares at some cheap dance bar because the absence of ANY acting talent in her is conspicuous in the film. Tanaaz Lal looks refreshing and looks a part of the film.MUSIC: Himesh Reshammiya comes out on top again with the track- Aashiqui mein teri.....

36 China Town is Shahid's first movie with Abbas-Mustan.Expectations from Shahid's fans are high: -How is Shahid's performance?After all this is his first movie since December. -How is Shahid and Kareena's chemistry?They both have stated it's better than FidaWell let's answer those questions:Performance is great while the chemistry is getting better.Story: Shahid wants to become an actor.He tells his parents,they get mad,he runs away,meets Kareena and they fall in love.They find a child and they take the child back to their house, 36 China Town.When they get there the head of the house is dead.They weren't the only ones in the house.Johnny Lever and his wife were there.Paresh Rawal was there.Shahid and Kareena were there.and Upen Patel was there.Akshaye Khanna is the detective trying to figure everything out.Positives: -Shahid's performance -Akshaye's performance -Music -Story and screenplay -Direction -Shahid's Dancing -Shahid and Kareena's chemistry is much better than Fida -The scenes with Paresh and JohnnyNegatives: -Upen PatelPerformances: Upen is OK.Nothing to boast about. Paresh was as usual. Johnny and his wife were loud but funny. Tanushree looked nice. Priyanka Chopra did OK. Kareena was great in her part Akshaye did very well which surprised me.Much better than his last release Shaadi Se Pehle Shahid did his role with such ease.This is easily one of his best performances.Direction: This is one of Abbas-Mustan's finest work to date.They handled every frame beautifully.Music: Himesh's music fit with the narrative.All in all a wonderful film.The movie starts like a normal Bollywood flick then you're at the edge of your seat at intermission,and you're shocked at the climax.But i won't give the ending away.9.5/10