Always Kabhi Kabhi

It's all foregone and predictable apart from being inordinately long. School is agony; school is ecstasy. Always Kabhi Kabhi captures neither and treads the staid middle ground.

I'm going with one-and-a-half out of five for director Roshan Abbas' 'Always Kabhi Kabhi'. Watching this film is like attending a concert put up by ten-year-olds. It's amateurish, and tedious to sit through, and the only thing you can appreciate in the end is the earnestness behind the effort.

The first half is dull as can be, merely loud, and while the emotionally-laden second half begins to mildly resemble something sweet, it explodes into a flashy climax that ruins everything.

The 'high school escapade' theme gets a stylish makeover, but doesn't make us yearn for our school days.

Always Kabhi Kabhi is a badly spread collage of multiple adolescent issues that have been dealt with in Bollywood in the past. It looks pretty in bits but fails miserably to invoke any emotions, impart any social message or at its very least entertain.

This is how such rubbish really get made. Or is it? Shah Rukh Khan, the picture's producer, would know best. That is, if anyone's really interested to know.