A script like this, finessed into something sharp, would make for a fine film. This one will please Dobriyal fans, but its annoying need to act like a farce with a laugh-track is what ironically dashes its chances.

Issaq is a shoddily written film with a cringeworthy performance from its leading man Prateik Babbar

I was loving this film till it turned the tables and cheated me.

Maybe, like the television-addicted Sanju, we’re all better off watching these films on Zee Cinema. At least we can change channels or fall asleep midway.

It looks good and is populated by fine actors (and we get a peek at trucks belonging to a bald man this movie could have used but doesn’t have), but the clunky Superman-as-Jesus imagery running through it all symptomises the problem with this narrative: too much steel, not enough man.

There’s a lot of Hey and too little Presto, and seeing the trailer on the big-screen is more fulfilling than grabbing the whole. There are patches of fun, but Now You See Me ends up a wasted mess populated with good actors.

When the songs aren’t playing, this is a daftly childish film, one where most actors act half their age and the narrative stumbles forward inanely and gracelessly.

“This is a rubbish love story,” Zinta says in the film’s most honest, self-aware moment. “I need a drink.”

Ditto, miss. And you best be buying.

And yet it all comes across as a pale Moulin Rouge imitation, as if that eye-poppingly original director was being reined in, perhaps by the very source material many have called unfilmable. The result is trite, a mess of restless marionettes — characters made wooden and visibly dying to burst into song but never allowed to — peopled by very fine actors forced to ham it up.

There’s lunacy. And there’s energy. And while this is an utterly stupid film that seems almost proud of being unmemorable, it mostly amuses. Oh, and Gina Carano is awesome.

Make no mistake, Commando is a poor film. The thrills are never quite there and, all of Janwal’s eagerness and leapfrog-skills aside, it must be remembered that a Bowie knife does not Rambo make. Especially when he gives it away to a stupid girl.