Masand's verdict: Aap Ki Khatir

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Rajdeep Sardesai

26/11: Terror comes precariously close

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Cast: Priyanka Chopra, Akshaye Khanna, Sunil Shetty, Amisha Patel, Dino Morea

Direction: Dharmesh Darshan

Chances are most of you may not have watched the Debra Messing-Dermot Mulroney romantic comedy The Wedding Date. It was at best an average film and if you haven't seen it, you haven't really missed much.

Sadly for us, however, director Dharmesh Darshan probably enjoyed it immensely.

Now normally I'm not judgemental about people's tastes as far as movies go because - like I never tire of saying - cinema is different things to different people.

In the case of Dharmesh Darshan and The Wedding Date, however, I do wish he hadn't seen it actually. And how I wish he hadn't found it entertaining either.

I say this because he's now inflicted us with his ripped-off, shamelessly plagarised remake of that extremely average film.

So yes, Aap Ki Khatir is about Priyanka Chopra who pays a young man (Akshaye Khanna) to travel with her to London and pose as her boyfriend at her sister Amisha Patel's wedding.

The point of the whole exercise is to draw the attention of her ex-boyfriend Dino Morea, who ditched her at the altar three years ago, but for whom Priyanka still has strong feelings.

It doesn't take a genius to point out that the film's biggest weakness lies in its script, it's screenplay, which is full of illogical clichés and stereotypes.

It breaks my heart to see so much money, so much attention devoted to sets, costumes and make-up when the same time and attention could easily have yielded a better film had it gone into polishing up the script.

Aap Ki Khatir starts off well. You even find yourself laughing at some of the jokes in the film's early half, but then, before you know it, it plunges into been-there-seen-that territory.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you tired of those tedious wedding-song situations?

After Hum Aapke Hain Koun's unprecedented success more than ten years ago, it has become almost mandatory that every Hindi film have at least one shaadi ka gaana where a gaggle of the bride's friends must tease the groom and his buddies, or where the parents of the bride or groom or both take centrestage and laugh and cry and dance together.