Say Hello to Chetan Bhagat! The erstwhile IIT-IIM-ian, who has sold a lot of 100-rupee books, now wants to be Bollywood’s Stephen King and John Grisham rolled into one. Because Hello is not only an adaptation of Bha¬ gat’s “international bestseller” One Night @ The Call Center, but it also turns him into screen¬ play-and-dialogue writer.

No wonder, just like One Night..., his second book, the screen adaptation is lousy, over-simplified and melodramatic. Directed by the erstwhile actor Atul Agnihotri (remember Pooja Bhatt’s wooden lover in Sir?), who earlier made the weepy sleepy Dil Ne Jise Apna Kaha, Hello has such a dragging narrative that it doesn’t even deserve to be a daily soap on TV. Bhagat being the screenplay writer, the film hardly makes any changes to the book. The plot points are ditto. Same for the flashback points. Only it starts off and ends differently, with the person listening to the story being Salman Khan, as the superstar. He promises the storyteller (Katrina Kaif, in the film’s other special appearance) that if she tells him the story he would make it into a film.

As if the story wasn’t lame enough, the way it’s told by Atul makes things worse. While building on the individual problems of the six call centre employees, he neglects the bigger picture completely. The underlying tension in the book, of call volumes from the US going down dramatically and the desperation for an incoming call, is just not there. So at the end, when six becomes 600 — not a single other call centre employee is shown prior to that! — the Rang De Basanti-like let’s-give-it-back-to-them rousing speech has very little effect.

What works to a large extent, primarily because of their performances, is the love story between Sharman Joshi and Gul Panag. She loves him but would rather marry the Lexus-driving NRI. He loves her but is seeing a chalti-firti cartoon network to get over her. Also quite effective is the chemistry between Sharman and Sohail with their riotous one-liners. There’s a must- watch toilet scene, where they fall over each other at all the wrong places at the wrong times. But for those two pluses, there are millions of minuses. Ishaa Koppikar as the aspiring-model- gone-astray and Amrita Arora as the housewife- in-distress are terribly miscast. Dalip Tahil’s stage hangover continues as he plays the I-love- my-America boss way over the top. Add two noisy songs (Sajid-Wajid) in the middle somewhere. Even that could have been dealt with, but the telephone call from God — supposed to be the pièce de résistance — is so 80s Doordarshan, so frightfully old school, that there’s nothing left to savour or salvage.

For Salman fans, there’s good news and bad news. Yes, he takes off his shirt but he is there for just two songs and one scene, which is cut into three parts. Even that seems an overstay, given Salman’s drowsy indifference. But given the story, even if it’s Katrina narrating it to him, we can’t really blame the man. You would do well to follow suit and doze off.

As for Mr Bhagat, we hope God gives you a call and keeps you away from Rajkumar Hirani’s adaptation of that other marginally better book of yours. Otherwise you might just look like one of the 3 Idiots.