British hunk Upen Patel is back, but ‘Bollywood Brad’ is reduced to an incredulous cameo in this infantile comedy which makes the Farrelly brothers look like Fellini.

A stolen diamond falls accidentally into the hands of Chandu (Upen Patel) and Chandni (Tanishaa). They hide it in a car belonging to Laila (Sameera Reddy).

We then meet three bumbling idiots, all with the same name: Laxmi Narayan. The first (Tusshar Kapoor), is an aspiring underworld gangster who wants to be ‘the Abhishek Bachchan of hooliganism’. Suniel Shetty is the second; he has to collect the car from Laila. The third is Paresh Rawal, an underwear (or ‘innerwear’ as Indians say) seller who falls for Laila. The three Laxmi Narayans meet at Hotel Blue Diamond where they get mistaken for each other.

Meanwhile, Chandu and Chandni must prevent the sale of the car.

This slapdash attempt at slapstick is pure Benny Hill meets Bernard Manning. Toilet humour abounds: in a vomit-inducing sequence Shetty makes suggestive pelvic movements against a hand-dryer in the hotel’s bathroom. When he is discovered, he wrongly assumes that he is about to be raped in the cubicle. In a running gag, the men are incorrectly presumed to be gay. “My nature is not like that, sir” they protest. The display of lingerie is used to evoke laughter; we cringe in embarrassment. Expect the obligatory pissing and farting jokes.

“I just love Bhai’s (gangsters),” an anorexic looking Esha Deol sighs. This is the most objectionable aspect of this pathetic attempt to instil laughter into the proceedings. It glamorises the Indian mafia lifestyle: a mother urges her son to successfully commit a few murders.

Director and writer Ashwani Dhir fails on all counts. All of the beautiful B-list stars are unable to deliver a witty punch line. This is largely due to a loose script which needs serious editing: all the unfunny gags run for an extra five minutes than they should. The dialogue is excruciating: when Shetty repeats his ‘Left-Right’ line for the umpteenth time, you want to thump him on the head with a rod. Indeed, humour is attempted via stick-induced violence.

This extraordinary tacky offering has no redeeming features; it is a catalogue of ineptness. You would not expect subtlety or anything politically correct from a Bollywood comedy but even this may alienate fans of bolly-base humour. Comic underworld mobsters: don’tchaluv’em? Fahgedaboudit!

Director: Ashwani Dhir, 140 mins, PG, Subtitles

Stars: Suniel Shetty, Upen Patel, Tusshar Kapoor, Paresh Rawal.

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