To be fair, the film’s second half does rustle up a few scenes of momentum, but this is a nearly three-hour film and we all deserve better. As do the Deols.

It is, then, heartbreaking to watch such a defiantly ostentatious director borrow plot-points from foreign films, stultify his characters with ridiculous dialogue, and fall for painfully mainstream trappings, like a hackneyed, obligatory revenge/redemption subplot that makes a most unnecessary appearance towards the film’s end.

Dhobi Ghat is a middling debut, watchable due to its nuances but simply not interesting enough to recommend. Yet Rao seems assured of her craft, and worth looking out for in the future.

The film starts off aggressive, turns into a game of toppling pawns, and ends up a farce as Kunti meets Karan and the audience dissolves into giggles. Jha’s films, while often flawed nearing the end, usually provide some sort of grass root insight; this one pretty much dares you to take it seriously. Don’t even try.

It’s bleak, bittersweet, funny and markedly unglamorous, and yet you come out humming the theme tune, your head blown clear off your shoulders.

Hell yeah. Welcome to adulthood, Bollywood, can we get you another beer?

This isn’t a bad film, though. By which I mean it conjures up a few moments, it will doubtless make some people cry, and every now and then we glimpse some heart. Yet it hurts to see that this is traditional Bollywood masala schlock, with scenes calculated to tickle and to evoke sympathy. It’s not awful at all, but since when did ‘not bad’ become good? Dr Feelgood doesn’t make the cut this time, and we need to measure him by the high bar his previous excellence has set — by which degree this is a whopper of a disappointment.

Shimit Amin’s film is an unspectacular one. And it’s quite hard to express just how bloody refreshing that is. Comfortable in its own skin, the film never tries too hard, and while it takes a little while to really get going, it completely eschews glitz and bling.

Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani might be laden with faults in the conventional sense of the word, but if you give yourself over to the madness, you emerge having a pretty good time. Watch it through 80s-tinted glasses and you’ll have an absolute ball.

And while films of this ilk are full of disposable-bodies and corpses-in-waiting, one discovers that Vishal has — sneakily, stealthily, surreptitiously — kept the sentiments so darned real that by the time the climax rolls around, you do actually give a damn about these characters.

Wow. Now if that isn’t kameenapan, I don’t know what is. Awefome.

It is only at this, film three, that the director appears to have hit a snag. Love Aaj Kal is watchable, but feels heavily compromised. It’s a romantic drama that would have worked wonderfully if it hadn’t tried to be funny in the first half, and doesn’t work in the second because the laughs dry up. We have poignant moments interrupted by touches of lets-tickle-the-audience humour, as if India can’t take a drama straight up.