In Budapest, a pest called Karan (Devgan) keeps painting boring pictures of a girl (Koirala) he’s been dreaming about for eight years. Kooky as it sounds, he spots a girl who looks just like his dream-cream at an airport. Cut to a song. Dressed in a grey suit in daylight, driving a luxury sports car (what does he do for a living again?), the pest screams Mehbooba in the middle of a busy street and chases the harried girl all over Budapest, where foreigners in the background repress their thrill at being part of a Bollywood shoot.

Pest’s lawyer (why he needs one is not explained), Kader Khan, plays matchmaker. Turns out the girl, Payal, is the daughter of the lawyer’s friend, so the bizarre connection is complete. The girl is vehemently against marriage and we flashback as she tells her story explaining why. Cut to a song.

Payal, then called Varsha, is dancing on stage and the judge is business tycoon Shravan Dhariwal (Sanjay Dutt). He’s smitten and we see his wispy hair fly breezily for effect. Performance over, he comments ‘kya cheez thi’ to his secretary and commands that she be given a job and a car on account of his company. Varsha cannot see through him and when she realises he wants to bed her, insults him and storms off.

In a twisted revenge drama, he proposes marriage. He goes to her father and talks his case. Varsha, naturally indignant, tries to show her father reason saying he’s a playboy who has affairs with numerous women. To which comes her father’s odd reply: “So what, has he given shaadi ka offer to any one of them?” Post engagement, the two get intimate and Shravan dumps her soon after.

Ok, this is not all. Brace yourself for the piece-de-resistance. The two—pest and tycoon—are actually brothers! The girl sure has a weird way of attracting creepy men. Both in love with the same girl and unaware of it, they bet that “meriwali mehbooba will be more beautiful than teriwali mehbooba”, as if women were decorative lampshades to be measured and compared. There’s a reference given to us about how the brothers liked the same toy when they were little, so there.

Then comes the usual rona dhona, talk of sacrificing one’s love for his brother, heavy duty melancholic drinking, and attacking of piano keys. The ending is so unbelievable it would be out of place even in a dream sequence.

Somewhere in the middle are insinuated several songs—a mujra-type item number, the lyrics of which are, well, risqué; a shaadi song, a sad song, one qawalli, the wet sari number, and a few romantic songs where the actors cavort in sunflower fields with a hundred costume changes. Most song picturisations have junior artistes dressed identically, stacked in neat rows, occasionally coming together to make a flower pattern. So reminiscent of the cinema we left behind more than a decade ago.

The story telling technique is unsure and borrowed from films like Saajan. The original bits make you wish the director had stuck to copying. I must mention this one scene where the filmmaker wants us to believe that electricity has a mind of its own and can switch on and off sensing emotions in a room. Continuity lapses abound, like Shravan wearing the wedding band in scenes much before the engagement. Dialogue follows old-world style with serious accent on melodrama.

On the plus side is the music by Ismail Durbar. While nowhere close to his work in Devdas and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, his effort is not bad and a couple of songs are reasonably good. For a film that was stuck for a while, Mehbooba is surprisingly polished, technically. Ashok Mehta’s (No Entry, Waqt, Gaja Gamini) cinematography is crisp, and captures Budapest beautifully. Art direction by Nitin Desai (Devdas, Jodhaa Akbar, Munnabhai), although jarringly perfect, stands out.

It’s great to see Manisha Koirala back on screen. She looks ethereal when the make-up’s right and gives a sincere performance despite the whacked-out characterisation. Ajay Devgan and Sanjay Dutt ooze presence and charisma and do well. Kader Khan, for once, is seen in a subtle role.

Producer-director Afzal Khan has gone the right way when it comes to recruiting his superlative technical crew and his supremely talented cast. Unfortunately, he doesn’t quite know what to do with this wealth of talent and gives us a rehash of a dozen dead ideas wrapped neatly in a story that spills over three hours. Quite a criminal waste, this.

Rating: 1 star