The biggest release of the summer Kambakkht Ishq is finally here. The mega budget Kareena-Akshay starrer looks like an entertaining, romantic action flick from the promos. People expect the film to be a glossy masala entertainer, which it is. Or is it?

There isn’t much of a story. When did an Akshay starrer ever have a story?

Kareena plays Simrita Rai aka Bebo. She is studying to be a surgeon but does modeling assignments to pay her medical fees. Whoa! Yeah, she has the bod any other surgeon in the room would like to erm...well ok! Kirron Kher is her aunt, Kehkashan Patel is her sister and Amrita Arora is her best friend. She hates men because she thinks they use women for sex. Akshay Kumar’s stuntman character Viraj Shergill is her nightmare because he is a typical playboy who thinks women are good only for sex. Aftab is his brother who is married to Amrita. By a twist of events, Kareena has to operate on him and she leaves her watch inside his stomach. Then she seduces him so that she can quietly operate on him again to remove the watch and not tarnish her reputation as a surgeon. Obviously, they fall in love. Talk about timing it!

The plot is convoluted. The comedy is crude, slapstick. The first song has a lot of T & A; cakes being smashed on faces and people passing wind and unnecessary wardrobe malfunction. It’s all in bad taste and downright vulgar. Many of the scenes don’t have any link; the editing is skewered. Sylvester Stallone’s climax scene was inserted just for the heck of it. The airport scene between a woman officer and Akshay is cheap to the core. Jaaved Jaaferi plays an avaricious Sindhi who wants to make money in America. He is wasted in the film and comes off as a cheap imitation of his Crocodile Dundee character in Salaam Namaste. Even Boman Irani is wasted; his deaf psychiatrist role is reminiscent of the absent minded principal he played in Main Hoon Na. Kehkashan Patel shouldn’t have been there at all. There is a lot of sexual connotation in the film and it isn’t classy. Some of the dialogue cracks you up but the dog-bitch-bastard bit gets too much.

Barring Om Mangalam and Kyun, the music is mediocre. Everything is very loud: the songs, the background score and the dialogues.

Coming to what’s good in the film, Bebo looks the part of the bimbette who could do things to you on a surgery bed. She frowns a lot in the first half and offers half a smile perhaps in the second half. She always seems to be in a perennially bad mood. If that can be counted as good because she is reprising her role of Poo in K3G, then we might as well agree that Poo grew up to be a surgeon without brains. Good for her.

Her role isn’t a patch on Jab We Met but it’s better than Golmaal Returns and Tashan.

You will despise Akshay in the first half because he is a chauvinistic pig and feel sad for him when Kareena breaks his heart. He has brought his character to life. He is a super stuntman and all the action sequences are top-notch. The scene where he proposes to Kareena is romantic and imaginative. The production design and locales are well co-ordinated.

Kambakkht Ishq has slapstick and mindless stuff from the 80s and 90s. Due to the hype, it will be a hit but it’s not a landmark film for anyone. Sabbir Khan is a David Dhawan clone without the class (or crass, you decide).

If you really want to see KI, leave your brains at home and don’t expect anything spectacular.


Janhvi Patel/Hill Road Media