Sorry, Acharyaji, this old, obsolete school of film-making with modern technique is akin to dressing up a corpse in brocade. It just does not gel with a film where music is all noise, lyrics all forgettable, where Vaibhavi Merchant as choreographer works in a vacuum and Peter Hein’s action blast is wasted.

And Aki Narula? Well, the seasoned designer has little to do here considering how little Kareena Kapoor wears, and when he gets a chance – the film has three heroes in Anil Kapoor, Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan – he does a fine job of a rag-tag accumulation. All the heroes, be it the don or the hired killer or the English-speaking thug, tend to dress alike.

And Acharyaji himself fails the test when two of his heroes, not quite proficient in English, make the same bloomers. Heard of two guys walking and dressing alike, but speaking the same lingo, the same turn of phrases, the same howlers! And to top it all, there are frequent below-the-belt shots which do little credit to the Yash Raj banner, otherwise known for clean cinema.

Nor indeed do the pelvic gyrations of Akshay Kumar, who has shaved off his chest growth for the film, much like the even uglier Anil Kapoor, who shows it towards the end.

Well, let’s not be too harsh. After all, the director has just taken the “Kumbh Mela” saga and given it a dash of the modern. The soul remains timeless, you see. We could have condoned that too if there was a strand of consistency in the film. Here, it is all jumbled up, confused fare.

It begins with the story. Anil Kapoor plays a bhai with predictable gimmicks. The only time he arouses interest is when he tries to learn English from Saif who, as an English-speaking guru, gets to mouth all “dude” kind of dialogues. Now this don has a girl whom he would rather use as a moll – Kareena Kapoor. And poor Kareena….well, she is poor, really poor. She gives it all. Slips into mini-midis, minier minis, even a bikini. But all along manages to look as hot and inviting as yesterday’s pizza left in the fridge. The poor little girl has other things on her mind. Read deceit.

Enter a hired killer – Akshay Kumar – who is given the job of finding the guru and the gal who have eloped with all the moolah. It is here that the director imparts the Kumbh Mela kind of twist, and a little dash of emotion, and lo, Acharya’s tutelage is complete.

Sorry guys, this Acharya has a lot of learning to do. Great budget, good locales don’t make a good film. Tashan has lots of style and almost nil substance to back it up. It does not augur well for Yash Raj Films at all. For a solitary Chak De India! they have given us Kabul Express, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, Tara Rum Pum, Aaja Nachle and Laga Chunari Mein Daag…. And now this! Yawn.

How fate changes with time! Many summers ago, Manisha Koirala was the dream girl of millions of cinemagoers. She could count Subhash Ghai, Mani Ratnam and Vidhu Vinod Chopra among her directors and no less than Amitabh Bachchan among her heroes. From the Ratnams and the Bachchans to Rajaatesh Nayar and Parvin Dabas is a steep fall.

In this Rajaatesh Nayar film full of under-utilised or un-utilisable actors, Manisha Koirala is the only one to have tasted stardom. But that was aeons ago, when she was fresh and frothy. Today she is all puffed up and worn-out. But in an irony of sorts, Sirf is just the kind of vehicle she can hope to get on in a badly floundering career.

A weak take-off on Anurag Basu’s Metro which portrayed urban angst with some sensitivity, Nayar’s film talks of four urban couples, each of whom has its problems. The problems are all commonplace: a small town girl married to an upwardly mobile ad guy, a hard-working man who draws less than his wife, another man too busy reaping the fruits of individual success to share with spouse and the like.

With an array of actors including Kay Kay Menon, Rituparna Sengupta and Sonali Kulkarni, besides Manisha, performances are not a concern in this film. What is a concern is the loose grip the director has on the proceedings, the lack of drama in the story, the predictable problems, the repetitive sequences. And a sameness to the proceedings which does nothing to endear the debutant to the viewers.

Sirf is only for viewers who like their cinema gentle and quiet with only an elementary grip on the proceedings. As for Manisha Koirala, well, she has had her moments under the sun. Why must she not make peace with a graceful sunset?

But then, as they keep saying, fate changes with time. And time changes with fate. Here’s hoping!

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