What’s missing in between is a fluid narrative, which hobbles the film. Or is the choppiness down to cuts? Either way, this is a film which could have been more.

There’s enough to watch in ‘Wazir’ despite its flaws. It reaffirms something we’ve always known: that there’s nothing to beat a plot-driven film (co-written by Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Abhijat Joshi). That the supreme importance in a thriller is to keep it going. And that strong performances are the pivot of any film: watching Akhtar and Bachchan joust and manoeuver around each other is this film’s high point.

…a bona-fide film, referencing the original pop-culture behemoth, and renewing it, with some energy and vim.

Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol film on the whole, is a plotless drag : the slaphappy antics you see on screen are a random jumble of light, camera, action, done in the broadest sense.

The grandiosity wears off. You long for a genuinely moving, exciting story, featuring all these beautiful people, all actors able to pull off characters, but buried under their mounds of clothes, mouthing dialogue. ‘Bajirao Mastani’ had the potential to be a terrific historical. What it ends up being is a costume drama: too many costumes, too much revved-up, empty drama, and too little story.

There’s nothing ‘angry’, to start with, about this bunch of young women which gets together to reminisce, giggle and celebrate. These are flesh-and-blood women, and the film is delightful till they stay that way. Being labelled ‘goddesses’ seems like a ploy to reel in non-Indians looking for exotica, something the director does well. It doesn’t do these lovely ladies any favours.

There are bed bits with generous displays of slithering lingerie on chest-and-thigh, and surprisingly for a time when ‘boldness’ is being dealt with by archaic moral standards, lots of open mouth-and-tongue action.

I really liked a lot of the second half. There’s so much good stuff going on, including the pair which strays, and then journeys towards each other. Despite its flaws, this is Ali’s most complex story, teeming with ideas, and gives us Ranbir back again, along with the lovely Deepika, even if the plot keeps losing sight of her : there are tracts when she goes missing. Pity it peters out.

Except for one segment, right at the end, which has Swara Bhaskar and the young Jha, and a sense of time and place, the rest have practically no weight, nor heft. They just go past in a blur, without any real markers. The lines sound forced, and Kapoor says them without investing anything in his character.

…draws heavily from Sooraj Barjatya’s previous work, with one glaring cosmetic difference : he sets it not in homes that people like you and me live in, or relate to, but in a grand palace.