Nothing very much was known about this film until recently when the music hit the stands along with promos for the film. From the likes of what little we had seen and heard, this was certainly a promising affair. A good cast, good music and promos that looked enticing. But I always have my doubts about a film that crawls out of nowhere and without much ado and is released at a time when ramzan is around the corner.

The film opens with a shaadi and Tiger (Jackie Shroff) extolling the virtues of getting married. From a huge stage emerges the "wedding singer" Prem (Salman Khan) belting out one of his usual numbers on stage. The scene then moves to his home where he is awaiting the arrival of his beloved Nisha whom the rest of his family consisting of sister, brother in law and two neices have not seen. Actually, out of the two nieces, one is a Jackson impersonator so we are not sure whether she is meant to be a nephew or whether she is in fact a niece!!! In walks Priya (Rani Mukherjee) sneezing her way into the house. Naturally, she is mistaken for Nisha by the others whilst Prem is changing. The lure of Bhajjiyas is too much for Priya and she decides to gorge on the culinary delights on offer before revealing her true identity. She is exposed by Prem as not being Nisha and after a demented tussle scene, obviously thought by the director to be hilariously slapstick in its execution, their neighbour Pooja Batra rushes in and rescues her lost cousin who was simply looking for her house.

The stage is set. Priya is here to make some money as a videographer to help her mother with her own wedding. Her mother is on the look out and she will marry anyone that her mother chooses. Prem and Priya become good friends and although Nisha (Raveena Tandon) was meant to arrive two months later, she somehow reappears on the scene earlier. Prem forces a ring on her finger although she appears to be wanting to say something to him and before you know it, we are all awaiting the arrival of the bride at the wedding. She fails to show up. But our Nisha is not a vamp who has ditched our hero at the mandap. She has a dard bhari kahani and has to make a choice between her parivaar and her pyaar. Her younger brother is suffering from cancer and as our hero has no prospect of ever making much money, she has decided on marrying Rahul, an NRI who will ensure that her brother is treated for his ailment. Broken hearted, Prem hits the bottle. Priya, amongst others is concerned but he continues to get sloshed on a daily basis.

Then one day, as Priya beckons him to fix a broken tap in her house, water spraying out all over the place, our hero is drenched and off comes his shirt. Priya kindly dabs a towel on his chest and face and boom, our hero is back in love. But this is shortlived as Priya arrives with an invitation card to her engagement with an NRI also named Rahul. Our hero is broken again. Will love triumph over misunderstandings? Will Prem be able to express his feeling for Priya? Does Priya actually care?

The logo running with the film says "marriages are made in heaven" and this is meant to be the thrust of the film. . Karan Johar managed a similar theme in Kuch Kuch hota hai and created a near perfect romantic hindi film. Yash Chopra also used a similar theme with "someone somewhere is made for you" in Dil to Pagal Hai. But whereas he managed to achieve a certain charm and spontaneity with that film, this one is devoid of all charm, depth or feeling. The characters in this film are cardboard, the situations unreal, the feelings (?) forced.

The film is a comedy but not very funny at all. In fact, the humour is utterly puerile. To give you an example of what the director considers to be funny, we have a scene early on in which Priya is speaking to her mother on the phone and then speaks to "Rocky", professing great love and sending smooches on the phone, all this in the presence of Prem. Now we all know that "rocky" must be a dog but not our nosy hero. The conversation that follows between them has Priya telling Prem that Rocky sleeps with her at nights and when she is not there, Rocky sleeps with her mother and that sometimes, sleeps with the both of them. Prem believes this to be her boyfriend and is surprised at how liberal she and her mother are. Is this not gutter humour? But in any event, its even more unfunny as we know that she is obviously referring to her dog!

Salman could have walked out of Har dil jo pyar karega straight into this flick because he is simply an extension of his character in that film, just as puerile and glassy eyed. Fortunately, he doesn't really have any heavy duty emotional depths to plunge and any scenes of heartbreak are dealt in a supposedly humorous way and we, the audience are meant to feel for our dear hero with his breaking heart. We the audience of course don't. His scene with Nisha when he realises why she broke off with him is meant to be one which is bathed in pathos, but it really doesn't work at all. You don't even laugh at the scene, you simply wish the film would move on to the next one. No one cares at all because we know exactly what is going to happen. However, for those die hard Salman fans, worry not. We have two scenes where our strapping hero strips off to the waist to show off his marvellous physique.

Rani Mukherjee has little to offer as respite to the viewer. Pooja Batra has little to offer except a poor choice of what she considers to be decent roles!. In fact, Kashmira Shah as Prem's sister has a better role. Jackie Shroff is simply an embarrassment. What in the world is he doing in this film? Mohnish Bahl manages some humour albeit in short bursts. The script follows this one idea scenario of marriages are made in heaven and the director has tried to make a breezy entertainer out of it., But between the director and the script writer, they come up with zilch. In fact, it is such a completely vacuous and uneventful film that I really had to pinch myself to stay awake, let alone stay in the cinema hall itself. It also seems never ending with misunderstanding after misunderstanding stretching the wafer thin story as far as it goes. It simply plods on and on and on. Utterly forgettable to the extent that on my return from the film, I could barely remember the sequence of events.

There are points in the film when I thought that the germ of the idea was not a bad one, even if it was not a novel one and that somewhere within, a decent film was bursting to get out. But it never happens and whatever little credit that I was going to bestow on anyone associated with this film, went down the drain with my realisation that this was an adaptation of sorts of the "The Wedding Singer" with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore.

The director really has no idea of what he was wanting to achieve. Songs burst in at the most inopportune moments and one knows that they have been shoved in for no rhyme or reason. A shame because the songs are actually very good but I think that the score will die an early death because I cannot imagine this film surviving for long at the box office counters. Through out the film, I had the feeling of déjà vu, that I had seen snippets of the film or interviews about it because it was all so familiar. In fact, I hadn't but it could be that the memory of films like Kuch Kuch and dil to pagal hai remain fresh even today and in comparison to those films, this one is quite an ordeal. Only for those who want to dodge their dentists…me, I would prefer a good drilling rather than have to endure this one again.