Bollywood Adda

Director: Hansal Mehta

Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Sanjay Dutt, Gulshan Grover, Arbaaz Khan, Neha Oberoi, Sikandar Kher, Sachin Khedekar

The best thing about director Hansal Mehta's Woodstock Villa is that it's only about an hour and a half long. And for the first hour and fifteen minutes, nobody knows what's going on in the film. Nobody but the characters in the film, I presume.

Sitting there in my seat I felt like I was being repeatedly stabbed in the eye, blinded by the saturated tones, the zip-zap editing, the crazy camera angles and generally by the filmmaker's irritating attempt to show off with stylish technical gimmickry. How you wish he'd paid as much attention to his wafer-thin plot.

Without going into too many details, let me just say the film centres around the kidnapping of a successful businessman's wife and the ransom demand that follows.

The kidnapper, one later discovers, may not be calling the shots in this operation after all. Woodstock Villa is one of those films where nothing is what it seems, it's a story of cheating spouses, double-crosses and mistaken identities. Constructed from a screenplay that's full of little holes, the film trades common sense for convenience.

And as a result, you find yourself gasping in disbelief at the half-dozen or so slip-ups in the plot. It's the kind of film where cops talk in riddles, and Sanjay Dutt pops up in a pop song for no reason at all. It's the kind of film that thinks adultery and murder are the most lethal ingredients for a tight thriller.

On the upside, debutant Sikander Kher delivers a confident performance as a morally questionable lothario caught in a web of deceit. He has an engaging presence and impressive dialogue delivery. Now if only he'd chop those long tresses and take a nice, clean shower.

His co-star newcomer Neha Uberoi is easy on the eye, and fortunately is not expected to perform any acting histrionics. Arbaaz Khan, as the businessman whose wife goes missing, turns in a competent performance.

Much like Rise and Fall, the short film he co-directed with Sanjay Gupta for that anthology of shorts Dus Kahaniyaan, Hansal Mehta's Woodstock Villa too suffers from the same disease - it's all style and little substance. I'm going with two out of five for Woodstock Villa, watch if you have time to spare, it's not a film I can recommend strongly.

Rating: 2 / 5 (Poor)