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.

This is a giant film, a magnum opus drunk on its own magnum-ity, and it is perfectly clear early on, as the narrative races out the gate and gauntlets are flung up in the air and shot through with arrows, that a film like this can only work as opera.

If you appreciate Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s opulence and grandeur, this won’t disappoint. It can be a good one-time watch, for Deepika’s performance, if not anything else.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s latest offering is not much more than a visual spectacle…