Masand's Verdict: U, Me Aur Hum | Krazzy 4

LOVE ACTUALLY: U, Me Aur Hum is a cheesy tale of enduring love in the face of impossible obstacles.

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Cast: Ajay Devgan, Kajol, Divya Dutta

Director: Ajay Devgan

Ajay Devgan could do with a crash course in scriptwriting. And while he's at it, might be a good idea to fire his co-writers immediately. U, Me Aur Hum, Devgan's directorial debut which releases this week, is let down by a sloppy, slapdash screenplay, which -- believe it or not -- it took four writers to come up with.

First, they rob the basic premise of Nick Cassavetes' mushy-but-inspiring romance The Notebook, and then Devgan and team go about reconstructing the saga, throwing in unnecessary melodrama and generous dollops of over-sentimentality.

Locking eyes with a pretty barmaid, it's love at first sight for Devgan, who plays Ajay Mehra, a cool dude enjoying a luxury holiday with his bickering buddies on a cruise liner.

Piya, the object of his affection -- played by Kajol -- soon finds herself reciprocating his feelings, and before you know it the couple is married. A little over a year later, Piya is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She blanks out periodically, can't remember birthdays and anniversaries, and even ends up putting her baby's life in danger.

As it becomes clear her condition's only getting worse, it's up to Ajay now to make some important decisions. Narrated in flashback some twenty-five years later, U Me Aur Hum is a cheesy tale of enduring love in the face of impossible obstacles.

From the moment in, it becomes clear you have few complaints against Devgan's directing skills -- it's his script sense that is in question here. Why rip off The Notebook in the first place? It's not a great film by any standards, above-average at best. And hey, if you must steal, why not stick to this story that you obviously admire?

Why unleash a bunch of hacks on it who strip it off the very spirit that makes it work? If you've seen The Notebook, you'll agree with me when I say it's a typical Bollywood film at heart -- it's got lovers who belong to different social classes, it's got parental opposition, it's got an epic sweep, and ultimately it has what I like to call a lump-in-the-throat ending. All entirely fitting ingredients for a masala Hindi movie. Yet, the so-called writers of U Me Aur Hum dump this perfectly workable road-map and create a rather lame one of their own.

Where The Notebook was a film that demonstrated enduring love, U Me Aur Hum is a film that simply talks about it -- and talks about it a lot. In fact, the one thing you'll remember about this film when you leave the cinema is all the yakking that goes on.

There's so much psychobabble about marriages and relationships, and all these stereotypes associated with love and companionship that you're going to feel like you're attending one of those marriage counseling sessions.

In the name of comedy, the dialogue of U Me Aur Hum is filled with painful puns and redundant rhymes. You're expected to laugh at such silly lines like -- Yeh phool deke fool karne ka idea achcha tha, or "I'm a poet and I didn't even know it". Funny? I didn't think so.