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.
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The reason I usually cringe during such songs or scenes is because they're all the same.
In Aap Ki Khatir it's actually worse, because the entire film is centred around a wedding.
So you can imagine the stereotypes you have to suffer - the groom's fat mother who recounts tales of her own heydey, the bride's comic father who spouts soulful poetry, the unmarried aunts, the flirtatious cousin sister, you name it, they're in it.
Aap Ki Khatir falters also because neither the writer nor the director seems to know where they want to go with this film.
If the film's first half is all comedy and light moments, the second half abruptly goes into drama.
Making movies is not like making a biryani. You don't just add a little bit of this and a little bit of that and expect that the final product will work.
No, you need to have a coherent, consistent plot and the screenplay might require comedy and romance and music and action.
But you don't do it like mathematics. Three scenes of comedy, two romantic songs, one fight scene. No. It's the plot that drives the film.
So although some jokes in Aap Ki Khatir are quite funny, by the end they begin to get on your nerves because they're done so often.
Like Akshaye Khanna and his Lokhandwala connection which is hilarious the first time and the second and the next five times perhaps.
But by the time they repeat it for the 30th time, I'm sorry, you've lost me, I'm not laughing anymore.
Most of the actors in Aap Ki Khatir disappoint, and while much of that blame should go to the ridiculous plot and the lifeless characters that they've been hired to play, there's really no excuse for being dull on-screen.
Sunil Shetty, Amisha Patel and Dino Morea are just so tiring to watch because they infuse no energy into their roles.
As for Priyanka Chopra - it's funny because Priyanka herself has a dialogue in this film that describes her performance perfectly - jab acting thodi zyada ho jaati hai toh usse over-acting kehte hain. (When the acting gets to be a bit much, it becomes over acting).
She's looking fab, but goes way over the top both in comedy and in her emotional scenes, and don't miss that accent she acquires the minute she lands at Heathrow airport.
Of the lot, it's easily Akshaye Khanna who to some extent saves the day. His spontaneity is a gift, one that puts him way ahead of his peers. In this film, sadly he's wasted.
For the second week in a row I'm going to say that Himesh Reshammiya's magic is wearing off.
In Aap Ki Khatir, none of the songs are the sort you'll want to download on your ipod.
They're boring and they're monotonous and they all sound the same. Of course it doesn't help that they pop up every seven minutes in the film.
But, you know what they say - some films are so bad, they make you laugh. That's true of this film which is so ridiculous that you're laughing hard in scenes that are meant to move you.
So then that's one out of five for Dharmesh Darshan's Aap Ki Khatir, a Hollywood rip-off that's done in 60s Bollywood style. Of course, enter at your own risk.
Rating 1 / 5 (Poor)
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