Masand's Verdict: Delhii Heights

CONTEMPORARY COUPLE: Jimmy Shergill and Neha Dhupia play a married couple working in rival advertising companies.

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Random scenes are slapped together one after another, with obvious disregard to the viewer's attention or intelligence. The film's editing is choppy to say the least, and its camerawork so arbitrary and amateurish that your head hurts each time the camera zooms in unnecessarily into Neha Dhupia's nostrils, or Jimmy Shergill's golden-dyed hair.

The film's soundtrack by Punjabi artiste Rabbi is average at best, except for his immensely popular Tere Bin number in which he appears himself as a ghostly figure in white strumming a guitar.

Delhii Heights fails because very little thought seems to have gone into its making. If it's trying to fit in among the new breed of realistic, non-formula films, then someone please tell me why Jimmy Shergill does the full-throttle Bollywood number, dramatizing every sigh and pause, and delivering his lines so theatrically that you suspect he's going for an Oscar nomination.

Case in point is that climax scene in which he begs his wife to return home -- I can't remember a performance in recent weeks that has made me cringe with embarrassment like this one did.

As for capturing a taste of Delhi life, forget it, because barring a few moments here and there — like that scene in which a neighbour planning his daughter's wedding insists he wants a discount on soft-drinks, or that other scene where two neighbours sit guzzling Scotch and munching farsaan in a car in their parking lot — which distinctly bear the Dilli chaap, this could be a film set anywhere in the world really -- Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore or Southall.

I'm going to go with one out of five and a thumbs down for director Anand Kumar's Delhii Heights, it's a mangled mess of a film that can really come of only one good use -- therapists could use it as a test of patience for people working on their anger management.

If you can sit through a whole screening of this film without tearing out your seat, then I salute you, my friend… And if you really want to see a good film that's inherently Delhi, then go watch that incredible comedy Khosla Ka Ghosla all over again.

Rating:

(Poor)