Batty girl meets sweet fellow. Is it cute? Yes, that first ‘mulaqaat’ is. And then? Then ‘Hasee Toh Phasee’ wanders about figuring out whether it wants to be a contemporary rom-com, or a Gujarati-flavoured soap, or a 60s melodrama, or all of the above. This confusion confounds the film, fronted by the most talented female lead working in Bollywood right now, and makes her much less fun than she can be. That holds true for the film, too.

It is ostensibly made to alert viewers to an anesthesia glitch which propels patients into a state of awareness where they can feel pain and can hear everything, but are unable to say it. The only reason to watch this one was to see what Shekhar Suman would do in his directorial debut.

The trouble begins with it not being able to find the right rhythm. The first half, where nothing happens over and over again, is a drag. Once you’ve set the scene, and introduced us to the characters, we need more. It’s only post interval that the film gathers some momentum, and gives us a bit of drama, and reason to see it through.

`Jai Ho’ could have been a pure and simple `Dabangg 3’. It’s not. It’s not even a no-holds-barred South remake either. Jai’s ‘aam aadmi’ catches traction only a moment. In the rest, he goes back to snarling and kicking and scowling.

They should have just compiled the songs, a couple of them hummable, in a CD, instead.

There is much to be liked in the film, and I wish all of it had been as good as the scintillating bits. The trouble is not just with the pace. Some of the lines, terrific as they are, seem to be added in just so that the characters can revel in their own perfect Urdu delivery.

I’ve been thinking of one nice thing to say about this film, which I suspect was made because its title can be read as ‘Jo Bhi Karvalo’. Funny much? Sadly, not at all.

‘Dhoom 3’ is too long and too laboured. And a lot of that has to do with Khan : he just doesn’t have the sexy-badness that is required for a part like this. He is in almost every frame, widening his eyes, rolling his neck, and trying for twinkly-wicked, but he comes off trying too hard. Bachchan and Chopra aren’t given anything fresh to do; Kaif is the only one who has a moment or two.

This is not what I expected from a film featuring a very pretty porn star, a buffed-up stud, and a thesp in jazzy threads. It should have been simple, fast in-and-out, grimy fun. What I got was stretched-out lameness, for an hour and a half.

This is yet another in the line of the Quirky Delhi Film, a genre that has long run out of steam. The novelty lasts for a few minutes. After which it’s all downhill. Dimple Kapadia is completely capable of carrying a film on her own. Here, she’s a sad caricature of a loud Dilli aunty, and she’s all wrongly played for the part.