by Subhash K Jha

Starring Emraan Hashmi, Celina Jaitley, Hrishita Bhatt, Mahesh Manjrekar
Directed by Manish Sharma
Rating: *

What a false phoney start to the new year! Don't even think of Narendra Bedi's Jawani Diwani from the 1970s where we had the wonderful Jaya Bhaduri and Randhir Kapoor whipping up a buoyant beach-party ambience, thanks to the wonderful music by R.D. Burman.

Not a single tune in the new Jawani Diwani registers as anything but pedestrian. Not a single dialogue gets anywhere close to your heart. That isn't where this cheap comedy targets itself. This is more a film that goes looking for thrills at the croch-level, and comes a cropper....or shall we say crapper?

The bigamous love triangle has Emran Hashmi making faces into the camera, trying to be funny sassy and suggestive. But Govinda did the bigamous boudoir comedy much better in Saajan Chale Sasural.

David Dhawan meets Sawan Kumar in this comedy of marital errors.Running helter-skelter in search of libidinous liberation would have been amusing if the spoken lines had substance and the performances were more situational than sleazy. Unfortunately the khol-doon-daal-doon kind of dialogues aren't even embarrassing. They're plainly dull. Such double meaning drivel went out of fashion a decade ago when the Marathi maestro of ribaldry Dada Kondke passed away.

This peek-a-boo into the world of lustful giggles falls as flat as a silicone transplant gone awry. The female attractions—Hrishita Bhatt as the first wife and Celina Jaitley as the lust—quickly goes bust leaving the film and Emran Hashmi(in no particular order) leaving with a feeling of abject coitus- interruptus.

Mahesh Manjrekar's comic villainy as a loutish gangster goes so over-the-top, you can see him going downhill, along with the poor script.

Jawani Diwani represents the worst kind of filmmaking. It's jaded and desperate to prove its 'sexy' credentials. Apart from a few soothing glimpses of the Mauritiun waters there's nothing here that you would want to see even if you had nothing to do on a frozen winter evening.