An auspicious red and golden cloth flies across the bright blue Los Angeles sky. It is intercut between shots of the source and the destination - Sim's (Kareena Kapoor's) purse on to Viraj's (Akshay Kumar's) face. Creativity of the 50s-90s reproduces itself in Kambakkht Ishq. What were they thinking? Sorry, "thinking" is way too big a word.

Usually, even if it's a bad film, I end up saying, "at least it put some money in the flow, good for the economy." But, I cannot stop hurting at the crores and crores of Rupees drowning from the drain to the core of the earth. What is it that prompted the supposed top-of-the-line *stars* of the country to entertain this no-line (ouch...just can't make myself call it a plot) and expect the film-starved country to be entertained?

Unless the definition of entertainment has changed to - slo-mo entries, cake fight at a wedding, slap-a-thing-slap-it-again, leching, disgusting innuendos, and so on and so forth. The loud-louder-loudest, loud-louder-loudest contest between Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor, Aftab Shivdasani, Amrita Arora, Jaaved Jaffrey, Kirron Kher and basically the entire cast is insufferable. Kirron Kher and Jaaved Jaffrey should now retire from this genre. For that matter Akshay and Kareena will do themselves AND US good too by not allowing such projects to find its way on the screen. Kareena looks good but she almost always does. So, what's the value-addition made by this particular set of makers?

Having the stalwarts of Hindi films cameo for your film is passé. Hollywood is the new trend. So, we have what looks like stock-footage of Bruce Willis to Angelina Jolie attending a "Stuntman's award ceremony". Then we have Denise Richards, Sylvester Stallone and Brandon do small gigs. And just in case you miss them, or don't recognize them, their name is repeated at every appearance. So, much for creative dialogue. The creativity actually lie in giving credits - Pooja Batra was credited for "acquiring foreign stars". Wonder who "acquired the Bollywood ones"?

The lines were bad, the jokes were lousy and needless to say predictable. The overall film cannot be called obvious because before you say the word "film" you know how it's going to end. Little did I know that the "establishing characters" bit was going to go on for the next 2.5 hours! I was wondering if the constant comments between Akshay and Kareena about each other's IQ was actually a hint at the audience who was still watching the film after the first 10 minutes.

More often than not, movies of this scale have good songs and choreography with an aesthetic sense. Not here. Music is typical Anu Malik stuff. The lyrics although are a bit more interesting than usual.

I don't remember ever having remembered my mom so often while watching a film. The brain went into a rhythmic pattern of internally yelling "MUMMMMY!!!" every couple minutes. The monsoon has set in guys. Go watch the leaves caress each other in the cool air. Certainly beats the awkward Akshay-Kareena lip-locks lip-pecks.