Yeah I’m coming back to the race…Just gonna chew and make you see…Make you see...

They did warn us... warn us of chewing our brains. Perhaps they should have mentioned permanent damage somewhere in those ominous lyrics of the song. Because once you have run, cross that, just sat through this new Race, you will become one of those fruits Anil Kapoor is chomping all the time. Fruit without the nuts that is.

Allah duhaai hai…Mushkil rihaai hai…

Race 2 = Stress x 2. It’s like this extra-terrestrial hodgepodge about two men who are friends when they meet and foes when they cheat; two women who are beloved when they meet and betrayed when they cheat; and that fruitarian cop and his fruity assistant who are fruitless whether they meet or cheat.

Tell me if you ready!Can you take the pace?

Naa bhai naa. Sorry, naa bhais (Abbas-Mustan) naa. Aao twist naa karein! When you’re going to overturn every friendship formed and every partnership paired every two minutes, who will possibly put money on your race? As the look on the faces of every actor in your cast suggests, even they weren’t sure which side they were on. In his jhakaas days, Anil Kapoor would have simply said: “Mujhe toh teri waat lag gayee!”

But now he just masticates fruits and reprimands his lady Friday: “Sir, Sir mat kaho naa, juicer kaho!” And when that lady is Ameesha Patel that juice can’t be good for your health.

With the first film, they at least had a ready film to copy from. Roland Joffe’s hardly-heard-of Goodbye Lover was Bollywoodised with chase and cheese in Race. This time they only have a template –– that of the first film.

So there has to be a party song on a yacht, a seduction song in a club, a scene at the race course, a car race on the streets… “Superhit on my mind!” For an industry besotted for decades with a “hit formula”, the Xerox sequel was always going to be “hit formula 2”. Cyprus, Istanbul, Turin, Race 2’s locations chaaron aur phaele huye hain even if every character in every part of the world watches IndiaTV for Breaking News!

Apart from horse racing and car racing, there’s goggles-changing gambling, body-hugging archery, clothes-stripping fencing and skin-gurgling wrestling and by the time that car comes out of the flight with four red parachutes, you have officially become Mary Poppins.

But nothing, absolutely nothing, comes close to the precious exchanges between Mr and Miss Fruit. If early on, Mr Kapoor tells Miss Patel, “Cherry, I don’t have time to pop your cherry!”, later Miss Patel tells Mr Kapoor after a fruitful romp: “Aap kya khaate hain Sir aur kitna khaate hain!”

When they are not walking in super slo-mo towards the camera or talking in hushed tones meant to make them sound intelligent, every actor is worse than the other. No, not really, you can’t possibly challenge that ex-Miss Sri Lanka in this department.

Jaq ge… everyone knows the fruit salad they are in. Like Saif was not even trying to hide his Kareena tattoo. And Deepika… she can now play that body-baring leg-lassoing party girl in her sleep. And poor John… there’s that much you can emote when Capsico sauce bottles are being smashed over your head.

The YouTube spoof video that the film’s producer Tips took down was 100 times shorter and 100 times more entertaining. And they got the title right –– Disgrace 2!