Take a large dollop of Jab We Met (a down-in-the-dumps, uptight boy meets a free-spirited, bubbly girl and falls in love); add a large helping from Wake Up Sid (a molly-cuddled rich kid Master Immature shares a flat with a world-wise Ms. Maturity and learns to look at life in a new light) and then mix up different flavours from various Hollywood rom-coms. Then you should be able to make a concoction like Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu!

A perpetually frumpy young guy (Imran Khan) works in a Las Vegas architectural firm. His rich businessman father (Boman Irani) and society-lady mother (Ratna Pathak) have practically remote-controlled his life from the beginning. As he loses his job and contemplates his future course of action, he meets a happy-go-lucky, nitro-scooter-riding young girl who is an out-of-job hair-stylist. They have a few drinks together and in a drunken stupor, end up getting married. (It’s Vegas, remember?) Waiting for annulment, they stay together for a few days and in the process end up changing each other’s view of life.

The very fact that this movie gets so many 3, 3 and a1/2 and 4 starred reviews in various top Indian web-sites is a commentary on the changing perspectives of the new-gen movie-reviewers. For me, the movie just didn’t work as a whole.

Yes, it is entertaining at times but is too ‘phoren’ for my tastes. Just because you make the hero a Punjabi Munda from Pedder Road and the heroine a Christian girl from Bandra, are we supposed to digest that any Indian girl’s father would not only accept his daughter’s drunken marriage and impeding annulment but then he would also go on to coolly ask her if she has slept with the guy? Or that the hero and the heroine would ask each other about level of intimacy with lewd suggestive gestures? Isn’t it a blatant transplant of Hollywood ideas on Bollywood conscience?

Trying to mix a rom-com with a girl-boy platonic friendship saga and a coming-of-age drama, Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu tries to walk on too many ropes and fails to deliver a wholesome movie experience. True, it refuses to follow some conventions but then it is also filled to the brim with stereotypical characters and situations. It is funny occasionally but forced at most times.

There are some good things to say about the movie, though. Kareena and Imran play their characters to perfection and the supporting cast too fits in perfectly. The music is good, the production values are top-notch and the movie ends within two hours.

But all these good parts do not make EMAET into a good or even a likable film. It is just one more addition to the NRI rom-com genre.