A tense romantic drama between two married couples — and the most compelling character in the film is a dad who dresses like a pimp? The film is working from a fundamentally flawed script, and our four (okay, two) main leads aren’t really fleshed out at all. Khan is perpetually pissed, an angry man too busy grumbling about his limp to care about his marriage. Mukerji’s character is strangely unreceptive of Abhishek’s advances. Preity’s Rhea echoes Bollywood cliché of careerwomen being ruthless and uncaring. Abhi, while a bit of an upstart, is the most believably written of the bunch. But never once do you feel concern for any of them, nice New York cinematography or not.

Too long. Too tedious. And strangely plastic. No, this time, Karan Johar seems to have got the formula somewhat skewed. For unlike his earlier successful celluloid soap operas, the audience doesn’t get to shed any real tears even though the protagonists keep crying. Nope! When it comes to infidelity, Arth still remains the last word in Bollywood. And Silsila the most silken.

Karan Johar takes colossal strides as a storyteller. Films like K.K.H.H. and K.K.K.G. were the tip of the iceberg. Karan’s take on relationships and marriages is refreshingly different because there’s tremendous identification with the characters. You see it happening all around you these days. Technically too, this is Karan’s finest work to date; he balances style and substance beautifully.

It’s interesting to watch a story on love-outside-wedlock carefully play out without falling into one-dimensional traps of a blame-game, where either partner is entirely villainous (scores of films). Or the actions are justified by a sweet, innocent, unrequited, but eternal love from the past (Silsila, and several of its clones). The film doesn’t perceive monogamy as an impossible human attribute either, so I didn’t see the moral status-quo on marriages being rocked. The discussion centres on how if you’re not with the one you love; you need not be forced to love the one you’re with.