Director: Afzal Khan

This is the way we used to make a million movies: a song stuffed into a loud plot every five minutes, a heroine who’s willing to be humiliated if it means marriage to the man who loses no opportunity to insult her, and two heroes: the bad-good guy, and the good-good guy.

In Afzal Khan’s Mehbooba, released nearly seven years after it began, straight-laced Manisha rolls over for billionaire playboy Sanjay, once he holds out that ultimate weapon—his maa ke kangan (no true-blue Bollywood heroine used to be able to resist these, remember?) She dons a red chiffon sari, and gets all drenched-in-the-rain on a New York apartment terrace; Sanjay reveals all too, in a black singlet, and sheets are left rumpled.

Of course, all that was a hoax, meant only to add a new scalp on the rich guy’s well — studded belt. Manisha retires to lick her wounds in Budapest, where she bumps into Ajay.

And, what do you know, Manisha’s the very girl who’s been haunting his dreams for a long time. Surprise. So he woos her, helps her forget the scars of her past, and fetches her to his Rajasthan haveli, where ‘ma-saa’ and her brood is waiting. As well as, surprise, surprise, bade bhaiya, Sanjay.

If you want to know who gets her, you’ll have to wait till the very end of this endless pile of clichés. Continuing in the tradition of the bad old days, one of the guys has got to die. Seeing Ajay and Manisha in Budapest puts you in the mind of Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, in which they discovered they were each other’s true love: clearly, Afzal Khan was deeply influenced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film before he began his.