The film opens with the usual happy hara bhara sansar. Grandfather Kailashnath (Amrish Puri), pines for his grandson Raj (Salman Khan) to get married and to make him a great-grandfather. But Raj is not the marrying kind although this charade does not last long because he soon ties the knot with Priya (Rani Mukherjee). All is well, the couple live in marital bliss and she soon falls pregnant. We wait for the hitch because everything is perfect. Priya falls and miscarries. Not only does she lose the baby, she becomes incapable of conceiving.

Devastated as they know that the family were very keen for them to have a child, they decide to keep it a secret. Raj suggests they go to Switzerland for a two-year stint where he says they can adopt a baby and present it as theirs. But Priya has second thoughts as it is clear that old Grandpa wants a child that looks like his grandson, his waris. Coming across an item in a magazine about surrogate mothers, she decides to embark on this course rather than try for a test tube baby. But who would be a willing surrogate mother? Raj becomes entirely preoccupied with the matter and is eventually referred to Madhubala (Preity Zinta), a no holds barred prostitute who agrees to bear a child in return for lakhs of rupees.

We then go into Pretty Woman territory with Raj trying to turn this brazen tart into a more polished and presentable woman, someone his wife will not object to. The plan is to move to Switzerland with Madhu in tow and have the baby there. Priya and Madhu become close and all goes well until Madhu begins to develop feelings for Raj and has misgivings about giving up the baby. CCCC is not a novel idea, this having been attempted before in Doosri Dulhan in which Shabana Azmi played the tart and Sharmila Tagore the wife. However, the flow of this film is much smoother and no attempt is made to make it anything other than a hindi film. We are not talking about realism or real issues here as they would affect the three characters although credit must be given to the directors that they do not make it a completely inane or pointless exercise. You do have a sense of Priya's pain in having to share her husband with another woman and her slight sense of insecurity, the hesitation in her step, her questioning eyes, the need for reassurance. This is not overplayed and handled sensitively.

However, it is difficult to debate the film for its premise, that of grandpa having suffered two heart attacks before and not being able to take the trauma of knowing the truth about Priya, removes it completely from reality and brings it into the realms of hindi melodrama. Utter bunkum and you feel somewhat cheated by the fact that that is the raison d' etre of the film rather than a desire that the wife be able to have a child that she and her husband can have to complete their family. There is also the character of Madhu, who is your archetypical commercial hindi film heroine. The tart with a heart, an ode to the Indian woman. We see her being removed from her sleazy world and transformed into a sophisticated and charming woman, who yearns for the love and respect that is all around her but of course what she cannot have. Yet another cliché that we have seen time and time again in the many years of bollywood. That said, the film is well pieced together with a gentle flow, without much melodrama and tears and a sense of very real feeling.

The best scenes are certainly those between the three main characters, all the side characters actually bringing the film down to a level of the more basic hindi movie. This has to be Salman Khan's best performance in many a year. He underplays and infuses in his character, a sense of feeling and warmth that is very real. There is also the comic side to his predicament which is nicely done. Rani Mukherjee has the more conventional role, also steeped in clichés but manages to bring a sensitivity to it which could have been lost on a less seasoned performer. Preity in the more showy and stronger role is also very good although her prostitute character is based more on the syrupy Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman than perhaps the no holds barred foul mouthed tart Kajri in Mausam, a far more convincing and realistic character. In fact, there are times when you find Preity Zinta to be irritating but as I said, we have to sit back and enjoy this as a bollywood film,which aspires to tell a triangle in a different way and not to attempt any kind of realism.

Abbas Mustan have moved away from what they are known for…making slick thrillers. Baazigar, Khiladi, Daraar, all thrillers and for those familiar with their style of working, you get the sense of a build up of tension even in this film…which shows the success that the directors have on their medium. Yes, they are captains of this ship and there are no rough seas on this ride. Anu Malik's music is a letdown with a couple of tunes being hummable possibly more to do with picturisation than the tune itself. Fortunately, the dreadful love you love you bolo has been deleted. On the whole, CCCC is a pleasant enough film in the old sense of what hindi films used to be…a decent story decently told.