Director Karan Malhotra has a unique ability. He can douse anything into a tub of glycerine and make even a movie about MMA into one about loving your parents. After all, it’s also about loving your producer.

This is India’s first carbon neutral film. If you watch it, you’ll wonder if the lack of carbon can be blamed for this celluloid disaster. Aisa Yeh Jahaan stands for grave urban issues: lack of green cover in metros, the Assamese being called Nepali, the homeless being reduced to hog on street food etc. But the audience will surely stand for a larger concern: to exit the screen and reach for a headache pill.

Films about youth striving for change and questioning authority have existed from the beginning of time. But it takes a little more than getting five shirtless boys to nose dive from a 15-feet cliff into water to make a Rang De Basanti.

Debutant director Vinod Kapri was astute in picking a subject that tabloid headlines are made of. But in execution, he couldn’t convey the mood of the story. Directing a satire can be tricky. It has to subliminally mock real events without making a Kapil Sharma sideshow of it. But subtlety is not a virtue this film banks on.

Anybody can dance, but not everybody can watch them do just that for 154 minutes (the film’s run time) at a stretch. Enthusiasts, who feed on dance reality TV marathons and expect this to be little more than the best of Dance India Dance, will find it to be an audio-visual delight.

…what could’ve been a sensitive debate on whether battered wives can challenge societal norms to seek extramarital comfort, ends up being an eclectic mix of cliches. Did Vidya read the adhuri script before signing this film or did Emraan not get the puri signing amount? We’ll never know.

WTK isn’t hilarious but has sparks of brilliance and is worth a watch.

It is upsetting that the 67-yearold filmmaker credited for classics like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro and Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa will now include a debacle like this in his filmography.

Also, veteran actors like Aanjjan Srivastav, Deepak Shirke and Mushtaq Khan are completely wasted here. There’s little to go by for a story and the dialogues are probably more cringe-worthy than the next B-grade film.