Even though Hrithik Roshan appears in almost every frame and brings his natural screen presence to the film, he is a shadow of his normal self, bogged down by a weak script, terrible production values and a lack of vision from the man who once made some of Bollywood’s grandest movies.

When a filmmaker of Ashutosh Gowariker’s repute decides to make a movie on Mohenjo Daro, the biggest settlement of Indus valley civilisation, you would expect him to be historically accurate yet retain his worth as a storyteller.

However, his ‘Mohenjo Daro’ fails on both accounts.

What Gowariker lacks in story and SFX, he makes up for with scale and action. There’s an extravagantly mounted song and dance routine extolling the grandeur and fame of Mohenjo Daro and the creation of this legendary land is commendable and the fight scenes are well executed.

…is a box-office disaster and will be rejected by the paying public. It will entail back-breaking losses to its producers and distributors and to everyone associated with the film and will, therefore, go down in film history as a colossal flop.

Making a period movie works for Ashutosh Gowariker as this is his third attempt to go back in time. This is the second time he has based his story on love. If we ignore the historical inaccuracies (he never claimed it was accurate anyway), the story is certainly intriguing.

Though this is the shortest film he’s made in years, Gowariker isn’t—and probably will never be—an efficient film-maker. What other directors convey in two lines, he does in seven. Long after scenes have revealed their purpose, he allows them to continue, lest the audience miss out on some imaginary subtlety.

The very straight, simple and oft-repeated tale of foster parents, mistaken identity, good vs evil is just another fantasy, a mishmash of many such larger than life epics.

…is a costume party with food for thought. Mohenjo Daro is far from perfect, but it’s also far more than the sum of its memes.