A film, then, about life, love and leaves. And in the end it comes down to the sort of snow-surrounded tree that you can draw even if you’ve always had trouble drawing leaves. Magnificent.

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.

Ek Thi Daayan, therefore, isn’t the scariest of horror films. It is, though, smartly crafted, highly original in its approach and a strikingly ambitious effort for the genre. The end is a let-down, but the film remains a fine directorial debut for Iyer. As Bobo tells Misha while giving her a glimpse into subterranean hell, ‘don’t be scared, look.’ “Daro nahin, dekho.”

From one True Believer to another, thank you, Shane Black. Iron Man has never soared higher.