Helicopter Eela is so saddled with banal story-telling, stretched sub-plots and exaggerated performances, including and especially from the lead actress, that it never really takes off.

The only trouble with the Anushka Sharma and Varun Dhawan’s Sui Dhaaga is its total predictability: you know what’s coming miles before the characters do.

There is a gap, a curious distance, between the vision and the execution, and much of the film, including Nawazuddin Siddiqui, resides in it.

Batti Gul Meter Chalu is a hark-back to a forgotten tradition, which, at its best, gave us story and substance. Batti Gul gives us both, for most part.

You want to shake these lovers and ask them to make up their mind, quick. You enjoy the initial exhilaration born out of breathless passion as the winsome boy and girl engage in the age-old dance of desire. And then they become exhausting. As does the film.

Shraddha Kapoor’s part is a bit risible, but she has some breathy moments with Rajkummar Rao. Rao, whose Bicky seems like an extension of his Bareilly Ki Barfi avatar, carries the film.

We can get why John Abraham is in this film: he’s done this kind of movie before, and this looks like an extension, but what possessed the excellent Manoj Bajpayee, who can lift a film just by his presence, to do this?

What makes Gold worth a watch, despite some problems, are the flashes of well-done humour, the skirmishes between the players, and the rousing finale.

Even Kamal Haasan can’t rise above the shockingly inept script, which he rescues only in a few places, when his trademark intelligent, wry self-awareness manages to kick in. The rest can be safely ignored.

Karwaan is aiming for an easy, offhand charm, and we get that only in bits and pieces, especially when Irrfan hits his stride on occasion, or when Dulquer proves just how good he can be by not doing much at all.