Ek Haseena Thi Ek Deewana Tha, is as long, exhaustive and cringy as it’s title. The story is of a girl Natasha, played also by Natasha Fernandez, because finding a name for the leading character out of the million female names available is just way to mainstream. Shiv Darshan says, “Ek insaan aur ek aatma kabhi ek nahin ho sakte”. Have you not seen The Conjuring Shiv? Natasha has a line, “Tumhari judaai mujhe jeene nahi degi aur tumhara intezaar mujhe marne nahi dega." Seriously? We bet she told her fiancé the same thing before she went off to cheat on him with a sexy farmhand, who honestly, isn’t even that sexy. . The actor’s are delivering the corniest lines in the history of corny lines and not a flinch. That has to take some skill. At last, Upen Patel might just want to stay away from bollywood. He is such a bad fit as an actor that it doesn’t even make sense to review him. If we could, we would take stars from this movie instead of giving it stars. But we are sure it doesn’t have any, so we give it a dignified zero stars!

What does one say about a movie that does nothing at all to you, that doesn't even give you a headache to register its painful presence? Ek Haseena Thi Ek Deewana Tha is one such film - a hollow puff of air that wafts by aimlessly, takes all of an hour and three quarters doing so, and is interspersed with a complement of songs that only serve to slow down an already somnolent show. It isn't any surprise that Ek Haseena Thi Ek Deewana Tha does not have anything new to offer? A single sentence would actually suffice to sum up what this film is like: it hinges on a weirdly nonsensical plot treated in a manner so bizarre that, kasam paida karne wale ki (for whatever it's worth), it would make some of the sloppiest Mumbai films of the 1980s look great in comparison. The robotic acting all around only makes matters worse. Upen Patel has made umpteen attempts to get going in Bollywood. He was part of the cast of the last film that Suneel Darshan directed all of a decade ago, Shakalaka Boom Boom. It went bust. Add Ek Haseena Thi Ek Deewana Tha to the actor's list of duds. Both Shiv Darshan and Natasha Fernandez are clearly in need of brushing up their emoting skills and dialogue delivery before they have another stab at a substantial screen role. May be the collective poor showing of the actors here isn't entirely their fault: Ek Haseena Thi Ek Deewana Tha is a train-wreck of a movie. It would have been better off staying on the computer screen it was scripted on. That would have spared the actors the blushes.

The film makes you recall, almost fondly, the schlocky, kitschy film-making of the 80s and 90s which was nevertheless full of colour and music. Director Suneel Darshan, who clearly hasn’t kept up with the times, comes up with a hopelessly outdated series of reel. If you must know, it’s about a pair of lovers and a ghost, and a villain of the piece, each as screamingly awful as the other. In the two hours I spent in the theatre, I was forced into asking why a once savvy filmmaker would do such a thing. Was it strictly about filial duty? While you think up an answer, and do let me know if you come up with something, I will leave you with a couple of dialogues: ‘glue ka kaam hai chipakna, chipakte hain’ (gulp) ; ‘bed time story toh bahut sunaai hai, ab bad time story suno’. Bad time is right. And this last one, which pretty much sums up this so-called film, and my ‘mann ki baat’: ‘oh god yeh sab kya ho raha hai’.

Reincarnation films in Bollywood straddle the real and the supernatural worlds, and are usually love or revenge stories. But Ek Haseena Thi Ek Deewana Tha is different in that aspect. It straddles two genres instead. While the makers want you to believe it is a romantic thriller, it ends up being an unintentional comedy. The only solace you can find is in the brazenly used cliched Bollywood including dialogues including, 'Tum mujhe chod ke nahi ja sakte', Main tumhare bina mar jaoongi/ jaoonga' and you give into laughter. And this is just the tip of the comedic iceberg. There are several such hilarious moments. The performances by all, including Upen Patel, Shiv Darshan and Natasha Fernandez, play out like actors in an school play. The music resembles an easily forgettable nineties cassette tape with both sad and happy versions of the same song. Yet, there's a lot in terms of music for die-hard Nadeem fans if they're still stuck in that era. The film belongs to the nineties, which was a simpler time when audience may have bought such an absurdist premise. But with a script that suffers from a serious case of ADD, you will just be mildly amused. Go for this if you dig films that are so bad, they're actually good.