I just think this is the sort of movie designed really well around the hero and therefore bumper numbers at the box-office, which this might well get. If not, I would change my name (just don’t call me Tiger, Leopard, or Cheetah, that’d just be just weird okay?)

…just a series of relentless, supposedly crowd-pleasing hyperbole. And so something big does happen in this picture. It should command your attention. The film is centred on it. But you know what? You don’t care. When so much happens, why would you care if anything is happening at all.

Much, clearly. To start with, unlike most other films that treat sequels as brand franchise, Ghayal Returns is genuinely the second part of Ghayal (1990), where Om Puri’s cop character is now an RTI activist. The hero, who’s lost his whole family, himself sees images from his life from two and half decades ago, when he took on ‘Balwant Rai ke kutto!’

You feel sorry for the guys punching above their weight here. I’m not sure if Mary Kom (2014) is the reason this wholly humourless film simultaneously moves in so many directions. The core inspiration is obvious. The story does lead up to the world boxing championship.

Very poorly shot, standard, third-rate double-meaning fare is what you get then. And god knows we’ve seen so many such that it’s hard to keep track. I don’t know whether Mastizaade is related to Grand Masti, which was the same as Kya Kool Hai Hum 1, 2, or 3 that released only last week.

For a moment if you disregard this pic’s massive budget, it does not even count as director Anurag Kashyap’s most ambitious work. The inter-generational saga Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) was—both in its scope and scale. A strong voice-narration (often perceived as lazy writing) wonderfully helped piece together that 320-minute film. There is none of it here. It probably looks messy as a result. God knows it’s tough to keep it simple.

This is a super hero film. Like all Bollywood super-star actioners are. The hero is expected to make a dozen men fly and eat dust with one stroke of his arm. That fauladi arm, as you know, belongs to Akki man. This means, as you might have also guessed: The presence of no one else matters on the screen.

I’m actually stunned by the reincarnation of Ms Leone, or Karenjit Vohra, ex-pornstar of Punjabi descent, herself. She’s come a long way, baby. If you needed any further proof that she is really a bona fide, solo Bollywood star, it doesn’t get any bigger than this. Does one need to sit through a whole mumbo-jumbo picture to appreciate that? No.

Between the two main characters the movie collects enough material not only to flit between various timelines (that we’ve been going through anyway), but also between various possibilities of what could happen in various scenes. We basically keep going back and forth and back…. The movie has nowhere to go. I’m sorry at some point you’re just desperate to go home, and maybe catch this on TV instead.

This picture is still in the ‘90s. I’m pretty sure the audience has moved on.