Pyaasa  looks like a bad film from the sixties. Late by about half a century, it is illogical to the core and tests the viewers` patience.  Sooraj (Aftab Shivdasani) is a young man with dreams and desires but no money to realise them. Sheetal Oberoi (Yukta Mookhey enters his life and tries to use him with the lure of money. While Sooraj falls in love with Sheetal, she exploits her friendship with him to settle scores with the family of his paternal uncle. But, in the process, she falls in love with Sooraj`s cousin, Prem (Syed Zulfi). Consumed by his love for Sheetal, Sooraj plays all the games he can to force her to marry him. Ultimately, of course, he sacrifices his love and lets his cousin, Prem, marry her.

The story (Sanjeev Duggal) is as old as the hills and the screenplay (Sanjeev Duggal again) abounds in mistakes. There`s no justification for the grey shades in Sooraj`s character - at times, he is shown as a perfect judge of people (hating his uncle) and at other times, he is shown as incapable of understanding them (hating Prem). 

What`s more, even though he is all along aware that his parents are pained at his decision to forcibly marry the girl (Sheetal) who loves his cousin (Prem), he goes ahead with his plans and has a change of heart only at the last moment - in the wedding mandap. Why so late? Further, when he openly declares, and also repents for, his mistake in forcing himself upon Sheetal, there is not an iota of doubt that he would now also return all her property which he had usurped to bring pressure on her. Still, Sheetal`s two brothers start gunfire after Sooraj`s repentance as if they feared, he would run away with all the property.

In short, the drama is full of clichés and illogical incidents pieced together to make a film. Comedy is terribly dull. Aftab Shivdasani does a fair job but his changing character is a joke. Debutant Yukta Mookhey looks awkward and has no grace of a heroine. Her dances are terrible and her costumes are even worse. As for her acting, the less said the better. Newcomer Syed Zulfi is no hero material. His performance is average; he needs to improve his dialogue delivery.

Saadhika is so-so. Govind Namdev is effective at most times but even he goes overboard in a couple of scenes. Smita Jayakar is routine. Anang Desai, Akhilendra Mishra, Arif Zakaria, Nadeem Khan, Sanjay Narvekar, Narendra Bedi, Dinesh Hingoo, Charlie, Mukesh Tiwari (in a single scene) and the rest fill the bill. A. Muthu`s direction is disturbingly poor. He seems to be completely at sea about what`s going on in the drama. He has not even been able to extract good performances from out of most of his artistes.Sanjeev Darshan`s music is a letdown. On the whole, Pyaasa is a disaster as it has neither entertainment value nor subject value.