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Let's face it. We like mindless comedies, innuendos, and slapstick humour. Proof: No Entry [ Images ], Welcome, Singh is Kinng [ Images ].

But not everyone can entertain while being loud.

And that's why Kambakkht Ishq [ Images ], starring Akshay Kumar [ Images ] and Kareena Kapoor [ Images ], is as far from entertaining as the North Pole is from the South.

The story has nothing to talk about. Akshay is commitment-phobic rock star of a stunt-man who is dead against marriage. As is Kareena, an aspiring surgeon. Their clashing egos lead to one trying to upstage the other.

But the plot has such gaping holes that a train can disappear through it.

So Kareena, who takes up modelling assignments to pay for her medical degree, prances around in Sex and The City-inspired heels and designer togs, drives a Volkswagon Beetle convertible, and travels business class.

And, on the basis of a flimsy complaint by her, Los Angeles airport authorities get a scary-looking black policewoman to grope Akshay most inappropriately. And the turning point of the film is ridiculous -- it involves a watch, Akhay's intestines, and supreme medical negligence -- but not very funny.

There's more. Kareena, a doctor, cannot tell if she has had sex after a night with Akshay. Later, it takes Akshay's chubby stuntman brother Aftab Shivdasani's [ Images ] defence of Akshay's 'character' -- he did not 'exploit' her, he declares -- to convince her of his 'good intentions.'

But you notice all this only because the film is so darn bad. No one minded the hilarious but ridiculous sequences in Singh is Kinng -- Akshay's last hit.

The actor, who has had a bad box-office spell, plays a swashbuckling Hollywood stuntman who lives in a mansion, gets a pedicure by a blonde in hot pants, throws pool parties and has women literally falling for him. It's just offensive the way he flings them around, mows them down and knocks them over. They are still ready to sleep with him at the drop of a bikini top and have 'golden babies' with him.

And in true Bollywood style, all it takes is one sob story to transform this man.

Kareena, meanwhile, is not just eye-candy but a candy store in the Chanels, Pradas and the black Valentino swimsuit. Designer Aki Narula's work for her is a masterclass in styling, and she steals the scene whenever she is on. That's where it stops.

Most of the film, she is hysterical -- kicking, screaming, slapping, swearing -- and walking the LA streets in the tiniest of dresses.

That she 'hates' men and would even wreck her best friend's marriage, is just an excuse for Akshay to kiss her forcibly, pull her legs dangerously high, and for her to try to drug him, punch him and dance around him.

As Akshay asks his lackey in a scene, 'Yeh circus hai kya?'

The rest of the circus clowns include Vindu Dara Singh as Akshay's moronic sidekick, Boman Irani in a two-minute part as a deaf doctor, Jaaved Jaafrey as yet another immigrant looking to make a quick buck out of suing someone or the other, Kirron Kher as yet another large-hearted NRI aunty (give her a PhD on the role, please), and Amrita Arora [ Images ] as Kareena's feather-brained friend.

You could say Kambakkht Ishq is some moneybag's testosterone-fuelled fantasy come alive. It is not a battle of the sexes --- as the promos say -- but a battle for sex. The makers of this so-called romantic comedy never seem to have enough of the three-letter-word.

Women are mostly in bikinis and hot pants and shot from tantalising angles. Even Denise Richards [ Images ] does little else but wrap herself around Akshay at every opportunity.

Amrita Arora plays a lingerie model who wears exotic swimwear at home and refuses to let her husband even touch her because her best friend says so. And Boman Irani, hugging a bare-chested Akshay, screams: 'I am a married man, please don't confuse me!'

Oh, the other Hollywood stars -- Sylvester Stallone [ Images ] and Brandon Routh [ Images ] -- seem to simply be there for attendance. Only Stallone gets a peck from Kareena as a baddie-bashing bonus.

If the film is meant to be a spoof on the stereotypes of the bimbette, the women's libber, the MCPs and the opportunistic Indian immigrant, it is all lost somewhere in the song and dance.

The far too few laughs come mostly thanks to Vindu Dara Singh's buffoonery and the rare moments of brilliance between the seasoned lead actors. That too owes more to their comic timing than the dialogues.

The dialogues in fact let down potentially hilarious sequences (to be honest there are quite a few wasted opportunities here). None of the one-liners stay with you, except the juvenile expletives. The forced comic-style animated thought blurbs too fall flat. The songs are an assault on your eardrums, the choreography full of clichs.

The result: What could have been a delightful film with a gorgeous Kareena, Akshay's deadly stunts at the Universal Studios, and a string of guest appearances by Hollywood biggies, ends up a torture.

Kareena asks Akshay in a scene, 'How low can you go?'

This film is the answer.

Rediff Rating:

If an American were to scratch his chin and look scrutinisingly at Bollywood, perhaps the best way to explain the Akshay Kumar [ Images ] phenomenon would be to label him India's answer to Will Smith [ Images ]. Both September-born superstars are athletic alpha males, earn the biggest packages, have fantastic comic timing, are armed with irrepressible raw charm, have set records for the most consecutive blockbusters, can rescue dud actioners with a smirk, and invariably come across as exasperatingly likeable even when they act in complete tripe.

It is at this point that the American, bamboozled by a truly bizarre poster for Akshay's latest which accurately indicates a juvenile farce with lewd humour and much inanity, is likely to interrupt our carefully considered Kumar-Smith comparison. (Rats, just when we were about to weave together something clever about how they both make excellent music video fodder.)

Asks then this astute Hollywood-fed cinegoer this: When was the last time Will Smith acted in, say, American Pie?

It is a tough question, and the American is being uncharacteristically benevolent, for Kambakkht Ishq [ Images ] is a painfully excessive work of burlesque, one so dragged down by the nauseating combination of toilet humour and lazy screenwriting that it makes American Pie look like Brokeback Mountain in comparison. Nope, Kambakkht Ishq is a weak, often revoltingly cheap film that serves merely as aspirin-seller or hangover-simulation.

With the film's leading man breaking wind in the face of a weeping bride, clearly Kambakkht Ishq is not a film aiming at gag sophistication. Which is perfectly fine, there is nothing at all wrong with an unabashedly lowbrow film, one which delights in skin and scatological humour, and makes no bones about being a collection of gags rather than something with an actual plot. What is wrong is when such a low-rent farce pretends it's a bonafide summer blockbuster.

When a film is small and fringe-y and obviously inexpensive (like this film I haven't seen but one a fellow critic couldn't help 'enjoying'), there is a case to be made for taking it for its tackiness and giving in to the tasteless inanity. On the other hand, when the budget goes from shoestring to Stallonetastic and much fanfare is drummed up with the film released as one of the year's biggest, the tolerance level goes down significantly -- ie, we can't be expected to actually pay for this monstrosity.

We do, with our money, our time and our expectations -- and we're served up a hideous bit of cinematic buffoonery.

Kambakkht Ishq is about a stuntman named Viraj who clearly must have borrowed a hip-hop star's lifestyle when he wasn't looking. Akshay Kumar's character has a round the clock buddy/valet, cars of increasingly glamorous make and wall-to-wall women chasing him, women easily talked into anything and women who want to make 'golden babies' with him. And then there's Kareena Kapoor [ Images ] playing Simrita, a supermodel/doctor who chooses from a gallery of furied overpouty faces, lectures her friends on how all men are dogs, and then goes around tugging her dress up so that she can compete with the worst Bondgirl in history, Denise Richards [ Images ].

Set the stage for a pair of cardboard cutout protagonists who duke it out in what is advertised as the battle of the sexes -- as if they're the first bickering couple in moviedom. And here they don't bicker, they swear. She's a model who sneers on stuntmen? He's a stuntman who doesn't need anaesthesia while being operated upon? And these atrociously unfunny characters go at it, hammer and thongs, again and again and again, altering not stance nor vocabulary. Groan.

Personally, my heart goes out to Kareena. The woman is strikingly attractive and one of the few leading ladies who can actually act, one who has given us a few blazing performances and has repeatedly shown that she's capable of holding her own against the very finest. She's something else, and even she has to resort to role this demeaning, in a film this stupid? It's a pathetic character, a part-time doctor with excessively lax morals -- she's the kind of medic who would eventually engage in organ theft -- and yet a Bollywoody sense of pre-marital prudishness. And her Bebo main Bebo song is the worst thing in a very ordinary soundtrack. Tchah.

As if these two weren't bad enough, the film is further weighed down by a non-cast, out of whom Vindoo Dara Singh, playing Akshay's right-hand Tiger, is possibly the least objectionable. We have a whiney Aftab Shivdasani [ Images ], a puzzling one-scene cameo by Boman Irani, and a big Punjabi glassful of standard-issue Kirron Kher. And then we have two women who can't act to save their lives, Amrita Arora [ Images ], smiling when she's required to look panicked in her very first scene (then again, it must be tough to register alarm while saying the name 'Bebo') and getting progressively worse, and Kehkashan Pandit, who really has no business being in the movies.

And somewhere in the middle there's a manic Javed Jaffrey [ Images ], playing the lawsuit-happy Keswani who calls himself a sue-er -- with emphasis on the Case in Keswani and much porkiness in the sue-er -- and it's a testimony to the actor's comic exuberance and the script's lack of smarts that this dreadful pun ranks as one of the film's funniest gags, even though the man pops up in fits and starts and never quite goes anywhere.

Moments before one of the film's only genuinely funny scenes, Akshay is recieving an award from Sylvester Stallone [ Images ]. The battered icon makes a neat little Rockyesque speech on the importance of stuntmen, following which Akshay, weilding his trophy like a sceptre, launches into Punjabi and talks about how a young boy who wanted to be Stallone is now sharing a stage with him. It's manipulative to the hilt, but Kumar musters up enough sincerity to keep it real, right down to him touching Rambo's [ Images ] feet.

Live it up, Akshay, but you really need to change your schtick. You might be the fresh prince, one who's brought Sikh regality front and centre with a bass thump, but unless you start showing some smarts, you ain't legend.

Rediff Rating: