You can tell, this is a B movie that was suddenly allowed better budgets later in its making. The picture is supposedly based on the mysterious murder of Indian Express journalist Shivani Bhatnagar in ’99.

You couldn’t care less for the characters, let alone the frikin’ killer. Anupam Kher’s the film’s leading man. Talented Pawan Malhotra plays the second lead. Which is good to know, so far as risking with top billings are concerned. Bombay films may still seem far from producing draws like a matured Meryl Streep. We could soon have Philip Seymour Hoffmans of our own. How about a “did he, did he not” like Doubt (2008) to match expectations from a script as well? Ah, never mind that.

This picture of hers does have a back-story. Whether it matters at all, is the point. Or, maybe not. The Brit-Indian cricketing hero never faces the Indian team in the world cup either. A real conflict in a story can be avoided too. It’s all good, this Patiala peg. Just chug de phatte! We’re all about Bollywood and cricket ‘n’ all, innit?

You’d imagine someone read this script and thought the supposed page-turner would make for another low-budget comic hit. They didn’t bother to apply any cinema at all.

Huff. This could’ve been a pure romp, sex comedy. It’s mysteriously rated A by the censor board. The stuff seems neither deliciously bad for its inspired lunacy, nor delightfully good for its sensible humour. The indifference truly annoys you by the end of it. Well, that sucks.

Dullness creeps in. Drunken scenes get repeated. Men get moronically pasted on a wall with ‘Dharamcol’, an adhesive that can join the earth to the sky. Jokes lose impact. Songs screw up the flow.

There’s no proverbial chemistry between the leading couple, and that makes for a film of its own. Not this one. Another Delhi movie, maybe. “Love degi, degi love? (Will you give me love),” he seriously proposes. You know what the answer’s going to be. But you want to laugh.

The picture’s premise is strong. The setting is solid. The scam’s quite awesome. The friends make for quite a foursome. All are equally endearing. As are their antics. And then the screen flashes, Interval. Everything dopily goes down a slope thereafter, and onward to America, arrogance and all that jazz.

What you may brave through then is a flick neither real or serious enough to be a meditation on global terror, nor sweetly suspended and adequately brain-dead to be Die Hard. It’s hard to be both. The hardship shows.

The filmmakers here pay Salman a tribute, by bringing him in as himself. Fans jump at him while he makes a casual chitchat with Katrina Kaif, who gets referred to as herself later in the movie as well. Such is the extreme movie-star ‘fanship’ of the filmmakers themselves that you realise, they’re unlikely to be making much of a film. You aren’t proven wrong.