From all Salman Khan movies, you rarely remember any other actor, besides Salman himself, which is just as well, because that is what audiences pay for. This one also stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui as the villain who appears in all of four or five scenes. He pitches his performance as high as the rest of the movie. Yet, you can immediately tell, especially when he is opposite Salman, that if this country had great actors for mainstream stars, blockbuster films with scripts as deliberately insane as this one, would begin to seem infinitely more tolerable still.

There is a twist at the end of this film that is way over-smart for its own good. By this point you already know Pizza (the movie) is frikin’ cold—not in a way that sends chills down your spine, which is what I had hoped for, since audiences down South, I’m told, have hugely appreciated this film’s original version in Tamil. This leaves you cold in a way that you casually stroll out of the theatre sighing, “Whatever boss.” What a waste.

Repeated references to scenes, characters and situations from DDLJ may bug you sometimes. This film can fully stand on its own feet. It’s hard for a movie to remain in public memory as long, given the choices of entertainment available now. DDLJ is still playing in a theatre in Mumbai. This would be the chick magnet for the week, for sure.

Does it matter that Bobby Jasoos takes far too many creative liberties so far as plot is concerned? Yes, it certainly would, if you went in only for a detective drama. Don’t. It’s a lot more than that.

By the end of it, you’re not sure if this is a soft passionate number on how love conquers all. Or a hard-core psychotic pic about a serial killer with a screwdriver, like one of those crazy Korean blood-fests, one of which, Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw The Devil (2010), has inspired the filmmakers here.

The film tries to be both. You don’t want to know how they’ve linked these two genres together. It doesn’t matter. The serial killer needs psychological help. You will too, if you get too drawn into the story.

A series of bad gags is still better than a bad film that takes itself seriously. Therefore we give comedy the long rope. This one is dedicated to Kishore Kumar, Peter Sellers and Jim Carrey for inspiration. You could find yourself chuckling during certain initial portions of Humshakals, even though you would be laughing at the film rather than with it.

The genre is the same. It is totally Tarantino-esque in its tone, making light of goons with guns. Though Tarantino by now has started employing his time-tested technique to make overtly strong political statements (Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained). This film doesn’t. It’s hard to tell whether that’s for the better (probably not).

The film at some level goes back to the original purpose of all public entertainment – the circus. That’s where it is set. It’s also about magic on a grand scale, a reason pop-corn laden blockbuster flicks fascinate us anyway. Is it worth 700 bucks? Do we need to rob a bank to watch it on the giant screen? Well, money is a relative measure. I don’t think anyone at my theatre was thinking about demanding a refund. I wasn’t either.

Yeah, this could have been Ranbir Kapoor’s Rangeela. It’s funny in some parts but nowhere as good and only half as much fun as director Abhinav Kashyap’s Dabanng.

This picture primes you up for the end, slowly taking control of your emotions when you’re willing to go either way so far as this film’s conclusion is concerned.