Ali Khan is a vibrant presence, lending her character spirit and charisma. She is the most watchable and memorable character in the pre-interval sequences, and gives a snappily told but somewhat cold film much-needed warmth when the mountains melt and everything goes under water.

In the end, the movie belongs to Freddie Mercury, the Bohemian rhapsodiser of the title, who conquers with his voice from beyond the grave. The movie comes alive every time Mercury’s sonorous voice booms out of the screen. His powerful singing makes it possible to endure the flat writing and staging with your eyes shut and your ears open.

Aamir Khan is the saving grace in a trite, uninvolving film…Krishna Acharya’s period drama, starring Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan, pits a gang of rebels against the British empire.

Great expectations are partially met in comedy about pregnancy…Amit Sharma’s comedy explores the consequences of an unplanned pregnancy on a middle-class Delhi family.

A wicked and wacky yarn about a crime and its unlikely punishment…Sriram Raghavan’s crime thriller stars Ayushmann Khurrana as a blind pianist, Radhika Apte as his girlfriend, and Tabu as a femme fatale.

What this movie succeeds at being is a well-mounted excuse for marrying light horror with glib and unremitting humour (the often hilarious dialogue is by Sumit Arora). The cast is in full flow here, with Rajkummar Rao brilliantly leading the herd as a not-too-bright mushball who becomes Chanderi’s unwilling hero. Rao faces competition on occasion from Pankaj Tripathi, and even the perfectly cast Shraddha Kapoor seems to be paying attention after a very long time. Even as Stree begins to collapse under the weight of its contradictions, the actors are always on cue, delivering the steady patter of conversational humour with aplomb and leaping out of their skins at just the right moment.

The gleaming cars, neatly ironed costumes, and orderly manner in which the props have been arranged barely convey the impression of the blood and sweat involved in achieving a seemingly unattainable goal. The pounding background score and on-the-nose dialogue heavily underline what is being seen on the screen. The sluggish pacing over 153 minutes contain few moments of surprise or discovery. In the end, the inevitable clamber for the exit gate is stalled in the final moments by the strains of the national anthem.

Despite the contrivances he is saddled with, Shaukat turns out to be a delight. Irrfan has had his share of road movies (Road to Ladakh, Piku, Qarib Qarib Single), but he has immense fun being the designated joker in the pack in Karwaan. A scene in which he rehearses his proposal to a woman he has only just met involves talking to a wall, and the actor ensures that it is memorable. Together with Salmaan, Irrfan lends the movie the poignance it seeks, but doesn’t always find, over 120 minutes.

Sanju is the fawning biopic of Sanjay Dutt that the trailer warned us about. It promises complexity and psychological acuity. Until a point, it appears to be on track to creating a nuanced portrait of controversy’s favourite child – but then it plummets into unquestioning and misty-eyed reverence.

The story’s real superhero isn’t Harshvadhan Kapoor’s dull Sikandar, but Priyanshu Painyuli’s passionate Bhavesh. Painyuli plays Bhavesh with real feeling, and the exact moment of the film’s descent can be pinpointed to the moment when his character cedes ground to Sikandar. The myth takes over the man, but Painyuli ensures that the man matters too.