Narrative meanders in portions. Screenplay is streteched out in parts. The amateurish, rough touches remain real still. So does the movie. Throughout. It’s the nearest we’ve got to an honest Indian take on the Wonder Years, set in early ’70s American suburbia.

Devgn walks to beats similar to Salman’s Dabanng. He beats the crap out of ruffians outside a village theatre. He restores his woman’s honour. Besotted, she chases him. Audiences think even more highly of the hero. He beats the crap some more.

While entertaining her audiences throughout, the writer-director, with a firm voice of her own, still manages to keep things artistic, without its pretensions; a lot of times, even poetic, literally, with profound poetry on love and life that you wish to hear again: “Aankhon mein hairaaniyan lekar chal rahe ho? Toh zinda ho. (You still walk with amazement in your eyes? You’re alive).” This is rare.

You still wish these kids well. So to the others who will go, watch this short film, extended to a full length feature, if they must. Do children ever have much of a choice at theatres anyway?

Besides, Murder (based on Adrian Lyne’s Unfaithful) was an aesthetically lit, coherently structured, semi-erotic flick about a bored, married Bangkok mom, in an adulterous affair with her ex (Emraan Hashmi). Sure enough, there was a murder in it.

There’s refreshing honesty in a smart madcap movie that never holds itself back.

The hero but looks a bit of a mutant doing action on photo stills, besides other similar silliness.

The filmmakers were possibly busy scoring a tax-free contract to shoot in Macau. Dialogue writers were giggling over their rhymes in every other line, pun on every second word. The editors were paid to keep their trap shut. Whining women (Kangna Ranaut, Mallika Sherawat) were picked up for pretty posters. Male actors then were naturally left to somehow figure their way through this mess.

This is how such rubbish really get made. Or is it? Shah Rukh Khan, the picture’s producer, would know best. That is, if anyone’s really interested to know.

This one makes you believe in benefits of plagiarism alone. Knock-offs have delivered for Indians, fine films in the past.