These are small mercies in a wildly inconsistent film that seesaws unevenly between charming and WTF! It’s especially disappointing coming from the very writers and director that gave us last year’s terrific Queen. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

…a non-stop barrage of stereotypes being played for laughs: rich Sindhi men and their love for living life large, grooms obsessed with their eight-and-a-half packs, limp-wrists and fat waists. Where’s the ‘shaan’ in all this?

It looks spiffy and there’s some gloss to like, but overall Shaandaar is pretty much — as Alia calls the fourth finger of each hand — useless.

…relies more on the youthful appeal of its lead actors than a tight screenplay. Sometimes, it pretends to raise an issue, but then shies away from dealing with it. Let me introduce you to the basic premise of the film which mistakes Sindhis for a community of money minded devils.

Dud characters in a stinking plot…

The film is largely unreal, exaggerated and a not-so-Shaandaar continuation of Bahl’s work.

Shaandaar has a fun plot. However in his attempt to spoof destination weddings of the bankrupt and the famous, Vikas Bahl, (who also directed that gem, Queen) forgot to take a script along.

Gatecrashing a Sindhi wedding would be more fun than spending time and money on this one.

Bahl’s scenes are seen falling flat most of the time, and he isn’t even able to whip out something to keep us captivated during the boring parts. He however succeeds in bringing out the best from his actors.

This is neither Shaandaar nor zabardast. It’s just fluff!

The story lacks imagination, the screenplay is shoddy and the dialogues unfunny. Some humour goes unlaughed at and rest goes undigested. For instance, there’s a scene where it is hinted that a respected business magazine takes money to put people on their covers, and another one when a young lad sets his grandma on fire.

Shaandaar is awfully written and indifferently directed enough to put you off destination weddings forever.

In essence, the story is told almost like a Disney musical. It is grand and looks beautiful. You might almost suspect that it could be Sooraj Barjayta at the helm. Nah, not quite!

Despite all that, watch this film this festive weekend because it’s been sometime since we saw a KJo embellishment onscreen.

As a cohesive whole, the film is a merry mess. Shaandaar, then, is a peculiar film – to be enjoyed for its beautiful moments, and to be endured for its bizarre ones.

Undoubtedly, it is a mish-mash of ideologies, of film-making aesthetics. I cannot shake off the big question mark – why? Why would a perfectly sane director go about doing this? You can’t even call this experimentation because individually every thing that the film does has been done before. Maybe, true to the film’s theme – it was not a film, it was a business deal.

Director Vikas Bahl, best known for helming films like Queen and Chillar Party, has acquired a reputation for himself and unfortunately for him, people have expectations from this one. But unlike his previous ventures, this one lacks soul, sensitivity and a scriptwriter.

It’s surprising that Bahl, who gave us a touching comedy like Queen, could make a film that’s all sheen and no soul. But if you like grand Indian weddings, you may find yourself rooting for Shaandaar. For others, it’s not a happy ending.

With the kind of technical support it got, Shaandaar would have been a much better film if it had resisted the temptation of being too offbeat.

Shaandaar does not meet up to the expectations. If you are expecting something extraordinary from Bahl’s latest venture, you will leave the cinema halls with dashed hopes.

The film tries to get all preachy about fat people, that everyone has feelings and all that. But the same film also made a string of gay-fashion-designer-rich-blingy-show-off-Sindhis-small-eyed-Chinese-Japanese jokes. It’s then a trifle hard to take this movie seriously.

Watch this one only if you are a die hard fan of Shahid Kapoor and Alia Bhatt or if you have nothing better to do this weekend.

…we’ve seen it impersonating so many Indian properties on screen over the years that it now feels more like a party plot in Thane.