Review: ‘Kambakkht Ishq’ falls flat on its face

Spicezee Bureau

Mumbai, July 03: Bollywood’s lavish production ‘Kambakkht Ishq’, which released all over this Friday, unfortunately falls short of all the hype that was doing rounds for all this while. The Akshay Kumar-Kareena Kapoor starrer apparently offers nothing new except for the much talked about appearances by Hollywood superstars Sylvester Stallone, Denise Richards and Brandon Routh, which have been integrated nicely by writer-director Sabbir Khan. Despite the involvement of four scriptwriters, the film’s main problem is nothing but its thin line plot, packaged with some extremely bad jokes that do not work at all. Also, in the name of humour, a lot of sequences seem to violate the thin line of acceptance, which makes it difficult to watch for family audience. ‘Kambakkht Ishq’ is the story of Viraj (Akshay Kumar), who plays a Hollywood stunt man and doesn’t believe in marriage, of course. Once again, Akshay plays the same old character of a playboy who prefers to live by the belief that women are good for only two things. As soon as he comes to know that his younger brother Lucky (Aftab Shivdasani) is getting married, he gears himself up to break it off. On the other hand, the bride Kamini’s (Amrita Arora) best friend Simrita (Kareena Kapoor) also rushes in to restrict her from getting married to a stuntman. But they couldn’t stop the couple from tying the knot as they had already made up their mind. Simrita, who by the way is a medical student cum part time model, hates men because of the examples she has seen in her own family. And that is why she believes that men are only interested in taking women into their bed. Thereafter, Viraj and Simrita do keep bumping into each other, but that only adds on to their hatred for one another. Meanwhile, Simrita’s obstinacy lands Lucky and Kamini on the verge of divorce. While Viraj tries to stop this divorce from taking place, Simrita tries her best to ensure it happens. The story goes on to a completely different track when Simrita’s watch goes missing. And to everyone’s shock, it is figured out that she had accidentally left her watch inside Viraj’s stomach during his operation. Later, after getting high on an accidental spiked drink, she goes ahead to shed her clothes to sing a seductive song for Viraj. Although the two made love but did not have sex, Simrita woke up in the morning wearing only a bed-sheet! Viraj realises he’s in love. But when Simrita turns down his marriage proposal, he asks one of his casual girlfriends (played by Denise Richards) to marry him. This act ignites feelings of affection in Simrita, and she then apologises to Viraj (Yes, this is how obvious things get!). Akshay has undoubtedly performed well, but the role remains of the kind he has performed a hundred times before. Kareena looks really hot in almost all of her sequences, and manages to pull off a strong character against Akshay’s (foul-mouthed Casanova). Amongst the Hollywood stars, Sylvester Stallone commands great screen presence but Denise Richards looks too old and fails to deliver a good performance. Apart from Akshay-Kareena’s smooch scene, the film also flaunts some exotic locations, bikini-clad models and shots of Hollywood stars from the Oscars (including Angelina Jolie). As far as the music is concerned, barring the title track ‘Mangalam’, none of the songs is worth a mention. On the whole, ‘Kambakkht Ishq’ presents Bollywood’s A-grade stars in a C-grade frame. It’s better if this one is not watched with family, and even better if not watched at all. Rating: Two cheers!