Watching Paheli is quite an experience, and it’s from the very opening shot of the film that its sheer, magical palette overwhelms us. It is so easy to mess a film like this up, but Amol Palekar does remarkably well with Paheli. It’s a leisurely told and naïve dream, and could simply descend into caricature at any point, but never crosses that line. It’s a charming, warm romance capable of gifting the most sceptical of us a big, beaming smile. Children will love it, and the affection involved in the film’s creation is infectiously visible to the audience. And the twist at the end raises astonishingly dark questions about fairytale metaphors, and sends you home thinking. Smiling, but thinking.

Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge is, by sheer dint of originality, one of the best Hindi films made in the last 20 years…We all have our favourite moments from the film — Raj’s valiant AlPacino-AlPacino attempt at Europeanese; Anupam Kher’s befuddled attempts at engineering marital bliss, unaware of the bride in question; Tujhe dekha to jaana sanam, when Lata Mangeshkar sang as gloriously as gold; an alarmed Raj stammering ‘beer’ instead of lassi to Amrish Puri; and there are women, I kid you not, who actually swoon each time Shah Rukh, driving a convertible during Ho gaya hai tujhko to pyaar sajna, runs a hand through his windswept hair.

It’s not worth reviewing, I concede, throwing up hands and admitting defeat.

Suffice it to say that in a bid for modernity, Ramsay strikes into even deeper mediocrity.