When a film is as pointlessly puerile and archaic as "Zameer" you have to look desperately for silver linings. After sitting through three hours of a love triangle as outdated as Nimmi's pout and Sadhana's fringe, I came to one moral conclusion about the film -- a crush can crush the crushed and all those around her.

Meet Pooja (Amisha Patel), headstrong, rude, spoilt and bratty. In pigtails and giggles, Amisha Patel does an encore of Karisma Kapoor's student's infatuation act in David Dhawan's "Andaz".

Ajay Devgan is the only male teacher in an all-girls' college. In fact, he's the only teacher we ever get to see in the entire film about fatuous infatuations and crushing obsessions. When a giggly girl asks what he's doing in an all-girls' school, Devgan grins, "Because I like girls." Two women are ready to die and kill for him!

Devgan plays Sooraj, an upright and conscientious hero-material, who's committed to marrying the crippled, terminally ill, bed-ridden Suparna (Mahima Chowdhary). Alternating between her snivelling devotion and Amisha's insufferable bullying, Devgan looks as lost as a baba in the woods.

Can't blame him. This is a totally out-of-step plot. The sort of triangle that belongs in the medieval times. Since most of the plot is about matters of the heart, the film opens with a stunt sequence, almost like an item number. Most of the film revolves around Amisha's embarrassing efforts to get her teacher's attention. She contorts her faces in the most unimaginable shapes.

I think Ms Patel was trying to be funny. Can't blame her. Ms Chowdhary, and the director, had ganged up trying to be dead serious. By the time the film is over, Ms Patel is dead. Ms Chowdhary is still serious.

It's like that old triangular hit "Dil Ek Mandir" where Raj Kumar was critically ill. But it was Meena Kumari's other hero Rajendra Kumar who dropped dead at the end.

That's known as taking the audience by surprise. In "Zameer", Amisha Patel's death is just an excuse to squeeze emotions out of a pale and completely out-of-sorts tale that would've barely worked 30 years ago. Today, it appears to be a monstrous travesty bound to bring down the stocks of poor Devgan who isn't really having a good time at the box office in recent times.

Maybe he should just stay away from love triangles. They just don't suit him. Remember "Yeh Raaste Hain Pyar Ke" where he had Madhuri Dixit and Preity Zinta clamouring for his attentions? Amisha and Mahima are even less prone to excite a triangular combustion.