When a film is pitched as a big-budget, big-ticket film and is a Diwali release to boot, expectations do shoot up.

Anthony D’Souza’s “Blue”, starring Akshay Kumar, Sanjay Dutt, Lara Dutta and Zayed Khan is supposed to be India’s first “underwater” film, has music by A.R. Rahman and is said to have a budget of 800 million rupees.

But, as someone said after the screening, maybe they spent so much money on shooting the underwater scenes they forgot to pay someone to write a good enough story.

“Blue” falls in the same trap as most Bollywood big-budget films have in recent times (’Kambakkht Ishq’ being a prime example) — it can’t see the wood for the trees and pays too much attention to superficial stuff while neglecting basics like story and screenplay.

Akshay Kumar plays Aarav Malhotra, the owner of a shipping company who wants to get hold of a “treasure” lying deep in the sea in a sunken ship named ‘Lady in Blue’.

He wants his friend and employee Sagar (Sanjay Dutt, looking supremely unfit and out of place) to help him in his quest, because he “knows the sea like the back of his hand”.

After initially refusing, Sagar and his brother join Aarav on an underwater adventure.

Even as I write this, I realise how flimsy the storyline sounds so you can imagine how flimsy it looks on screen.

And if you thought last week’s release “Acid Factory” had bad acting, what would you say about the performances in “Blue”?

The entire cast sleepwalks through their roles and none of them is remotely convincing.

Sanjay Dutt in particular is desperately in need of a trainer — both for his acting and to get into shape. (To top it all, he is made to wear a lycra scuba suit in the last half-an-hour of the film).

Even Rahman’s music is lacklustre. But “Blue” does have some interestingly shot underwater scenes and good bike chases. There are also some item songs, lots of beaches and bikinis and skin show.

Besides, it is Diwali and who cares about serious stuff like story and screenplay when you have bikes and bikinis?

A feeling of numbness and disbelief is not uncommon after a movie-watching experience. Sometimes you are awed by the sheer vision of the director or the depth of a particular performance. Sometimes, it is a thought expressed, or an expression that stays with you.

But after watching “Kambakkht Ishq”, I was left numb at the thought someone could make such a bad film.

Yes, there is no other word for it. This extremely expensive film, with cameos by Hollywood stars and flashy fight sequences, isn’t quite the entertainer it promised to be.

Akshay Kumar is Viraj Shergill, a stuntman in Hollywood who likes to play the field. Aftab Shivdasani plays his younger brother, Lucky, who falls in love and gets married to Kamini (Amrita Arora).

Kareena Kapoor plays Simrita Rai, Kamini’s best friend and a part-time model and medical student who has a militant hatred of men, believing that they want “only one thing.”

Of course, in the tradition of Bollywood love stories, Viraj and Simrita hate each other at first sight and indulge in some mindless bickering in the first half.

There are also mindless song sequences, some corny double meaning innuendos, and jokes which lack punch and are often offensive — especially to women.

Then, to make matters worse, Viraj meets with an accident on the sets and ruptures his intestines. Guess who gets to operate on him? Yes, you guessed right.

So when Simrita operates on our hero, she mistakenly leaves behind a watch in his body.

Viraj walks out of the hospital with a watch lodged near his intestines and our heroine is left wondering how she can get him back on the operating table and get rid of the offensive object without being sued.

This is the problem the film focuses on in the second half of the film.
Hollywood actors Sylvester Stallone puts in an appearance as himself in two scenes as does Bond girl Denise Richards.

Richards even agrees to marry Viraj, before she is unceremoniously dumped for Kareena in the climax. And don’t miss the scene in which all of Hollywood stands up for “India’s national anthem” in the Kodak theatre. It’s hilarious, especially because it isn’t meant to be.

Of the performances, Jaaved Jaffrey and Boman Irani play some of the most mindless roles in film history. Kirron Kher, (who has perfected the loud, Punjabi mother act by now), hams it up as Kareena’s aunt and Aftab Shivdasani and Amrita Arora look like they would rather be home asleep in bed than on the sets of this film.

Kareena Kapoor is stuck with what is barely a role, and though she tries hard to pull it off, you feel no sympathy for her character. But it is Akshay Kumar who is the real disappointment.

Here is an actor who has managed to pull off some of the most badly written roles of recent times — whether “Welcome” or a “Singh is Kinng” — he manages to look good in a bad film.

In “Kambakkht Ishq”, his magic fails and his famed penchant for humour is nowhere to be seen.

This is a movie that is so bad, you have to see it to believe it. So go buy tickets.

There are films that grab you instantly and don’t let you go till the credits roll. There are those that start off on a great note but lose the plot midway. And then there are those which don’t start off on a good note, nor do they end on one.

Nagesh Kukunoor’s “Tasveer” falls in the third category. The film starts off at a sluggish pace, but by the time the second half rolls in, it graduates into a half-decent thriller and you start to think that Kukunoor may be on to something after all. You are wrong. But we will get to that in a bit.

The protagonist of this film is Jai Puri (Akshay Kumar), a somewhat melancholic forest officer (although his profession is dealt with in the first five minutes of the film and never mentioned later) who we are told can see the past through a photo.

When his father dies in a purported drowning accident, Jai comes across a slightly eccentric, obsessive ex-cop Habibullah Pasha (Jaaved Jaffrey, playing what I thought was the best character in the film), who is convinced that it was murder.

Determined to get to the bottom of it, Jai tries to solve the mystery by going back in time to when the tragedy occurred, through a photo clicked just minutes before his father drowned.

Jai finds that each of the three people in the photo with his father had a reason to kill him, and sets about trying to find the killer.

What you want from a suspense thriller — very obviously — are thrills (of which the film provides none), and of course a great climax. Unfortunately, the film’s climax, which could have been quite innovative, turns into this sordid saga which never seems to end.

At just over two hours, the film lags in places, and neither the script nor editing is tight. The locales are picturesque given that the film is shot entirely in Canada, but that is not why you would watch a thriller. 

Of the cast, everyone except Jaffrey looks like they would rather be facing a tiger than acting in this film. Akshay Kumar looks so disinterested in the part he is playing, there’s not a single scene where you feel for his character.

What I feel really bad about is that this film has Nagesh Kukunoor as its director. The man who gave us films like “Teen Deewarein”, “Iqbal”, “Hyderabad Blues” and my personal favourite - “Dor”, slips into mediocrity with his latest. 

I even overlooked “Bombay to Bangkok” because Kukunoor was one of the few directors on my “to watch out for” list. Now, I wonder if it is time to take him off it

Given that Tasveer is the last Hindi film you will see at the theatres for some time (producers and exhibitors have been unable to arrive at a solution with regards to distribution of revenues), this is definitely not the best way to bid a temporary good bye to your neighbourhood multiplex.

Ever looked at those picture perfect fashion models walking on the runway and wondered how they do it? Well, actor Shah Rukh Khan has the answer.

“I was told the secret was to suck your cheeks in, pout your lips and look really angry, when you walk the ramp,” Khan told a wildly cheering audience after he walked the ramp for Manish Malhotra at Mumbai’s Lakme Fashion Week.

Looking dapper in a black-and-gold jacket and cheered on by celebrities Arjun Rampal, Preity Zinta, Kajol and Karan Johar, Khan was clearly the show-stopper on Monday night.

Khan’s tongue-in-cheek humour was also in full form, because he thanked Malhotra for being the first fashion designer ever “to design a sling” — referring to the matching gold-and-black sling he wore for the show.

Doctors have advised the 43-year-old actor to keep his arm in a sling for at least six weeks after he underwent shoulder surgery last month.

Of course, Khan wasn’t the only Bollywood attraction at the fashion week.

Earlier on Monday, Akshay Kumar walked the ramp for designer Tarun Tahiliani and asked wife Twinkle, seated in the front row, to unbutton the fly of his jeans.

Bollywood stars sure are getting bold on the ramp.

If you are looking for intellectual stimulation at the movies, watch Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling” or wait for “Slumdog Millionaire” — “Chandni Chowk to China” is definitely not what you are looking for.

It’s the first big release of the year, is produced by a big Hollywood studio looking to enter the Indian market and has one of India’s most bankable stars. But it also has a lot of Bollywood “formula”.

Now whether you like this film or not depends on whether you like the “formula”. Do you like the twins separating-at-birth-and-meeting-20-years-later formula? Or perhaps the I-will-avenge-my-father’s-death formula? Take your pick because “Chandni Chowk to China” has taken each and every cliché from Hindi cinema of the 70s and 80s and repackaged it.

Akshay Kumar plays Sidhu, a simpleton cook in Delhi’s famed Chandni Chowk, who fumbles his way through life and is waiting for the stroke of luck that will change his life. Through a chance encounter possible only in Hindi cinema, he meets two natives of China. They are convinced Sidhu is the reincarnation of the ancient warrior Liu Sheng, who will rescue them from the clutches of evil villain Hojo.

Somewhere along the way we also learn of Inspector Chang, whose family was separated because of Hojo. Chang’s twin daughters, Sakhi and Suzie (played by Deepika Padukone) are separated while he loses his memory.

To attempt to explain the story beyond this point is difficult, because the plot gets too convoluted and loses itself at many places. Except for the 20 minutes in the second half, where Chang is training Akshay in the art of kung fu, the rest of the movie is one chaotic scene.

But “Chandni Chowk to China” is unabashed about this chaos. It seems to be saying — this is how we like our movies and this is how we will make them. Who cares about a coherent plot line  when you have Akshay Kumar performing stunts and singing mid-air with Deepika Padukone?

Like it or not, this is Bollywood formula at its best or worst, whichever way you look at it.

 I don’t think “Singh is Kinng” will fail at the box-office. The film may work for a number of reasons, but content is not one of them.   

“Singh is Kinng”, which stars Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif, epitomises the much used phrase for most Bollywood films — leave your brains behind. The director, writers and the actors in this film certainly did.

 Kumar plays Happy Singh, a bumbling Sikh in a small village in Punjab. He spends his time chasing hens and generally wreaking havoc.

Fed up of his antics, the villagers send him away to Australia on the pretext of bringing back Lucky Singh (yeah, they got really creative with names in this film), a villager who has become a mafia don Down Under, so that Lucky’s ageing parents can meet him.

Accompanying Happy is his friend, Rangeela, played by Om Puri, (it pains me to see one of India’s best actors stuck in such mindless roles). Somehow the duo land up in Egypt, just long enough for Happy to set his eyes on Sonia (Katrina Kaif), fall in love and  do a flashy dance sequence with the pyramids as the backdrop.

Happy now heads to Australia to convince Lucky to give up his erring ways and come back to the village in India.

From here on, the film is a series of accidents, both real and intended. Lucky almost gets killed, Happy takes his place as the King (of what, we are never told) and we realise that random foreigners are trying to kill Happy/Sonia (at this point I didn’t even want to know why).

The climax is predictable. Of the cast, Katrina Kaif performs marvellously - by that I mean she looks ravishing and even manages to speak Hindi, which is what is expected of her anyway. Ranvir Shorey is wasted as her obnoxious fiancé, as is Om Puri. The rest of the supporting cast look the same and act the same, pulling out guns at will and shooting people in crowded malls.

Akshay Kumar is stuck in a role that honestly does nothing for either his comic ability or action skills — but he still performs it with conviction.

Like I said in the beginning, “Singh is Kinng” will probably be liked by a lot of people, and might do well at the box-office. Unfortunately, content is not king here, and our filmmakers seem OK with that.