The material is slender and too stretched over two hours, as it goes from engineering-medicine into management, the holy grail.

The eternally amoral Emraan Hashmi plays a man helping students cheat in a film that never finds momentum.

Why Cheat India can’t decide if Rocky is a hero or villain. I don’t have a problem with that. What’s harder to take is the inconsistent tonality and the convoluted second act. Every time you think the film has reached a climax, Soumik tacks on another end. Because Why Cheat India wants to both celebrate and punish Rocky. But that, like the hybrid of fact and fiction, needed far more imagination and audacity.

A jumbo mess of warped notions and random ambition, Why Cheat India trivialises education and shows sympathy for deceit

This one leaves a bitter aftertaste. 

The film starts off well but loses track before it can reach halftime…

The ‘curse of the second half’ in Hindi pictures is simply so severe, especially when it comes to films with well-known faces, that even as I find myself really enjoying a movie, there’s a radar at the back of the brain constantly cautioning one to only hope that the post-interval portions even live up to the first half — by half. If so, then as an audience, you’re pretty much through.

Emraan Hashmi plays conman with flair but is bogged down by convoluted screenplay

The movie shifts from one scam to another without much thought and relevance, presumably for shock-value. And it shows in its treatment.