Minutes before the interval, Lara Dutta’s Mihika Banerjee runs through the platform of Jhunjhunu’s Nua station as the train that will take her to Delhi chugs past. Vinay Pathak’s Manu Gupta, her garrulous and grubby fellow passenger, extends a stubby hand in an attempt to pull her in. Nod to the iconic sequence in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge? You manage a half-smile.

The rest of Chalo Dilli is too busy ripping off from Jab We Met. There are the two chalk-and-cheese characters who end up miles away from home and need to depend on each other — unwillingly at first, more than happy to, later — to get back. They hitch rides on trucks, trudge on foot, hang on to tractors and precariously position themselves on rickety bicycles, with every kilometre throwing up quirky characters and impossible situations.

As they get closer to their destination, the journey strips them of their pride and their prejudices, with at least one of them changing irrevocably. Apart from the fact that there is a gender reversal — she is the uptight corporate honcho, he the loqacious street-smart businessman — Chalo Dilli is a desperately impoverished copy of the delightful Imitiaz Ali film whose every TV rerun still enjoys a sizeable TRP chunk.

The broad script structure and the predictable lead characters apart, the Jab We Met parallels are one too many. The arduous train journey, the lost luggage, the constant fights and even a dingy hotel called Hotel Red Tomato Palace, with its garish décor and seedy inmates. Remember Geet? Remember Aditya? Remember Hotel Decent? And if giving us a near copy-paste of Jab We Met wasn’t enough, Chalo Dilli even downloads portions of the Robert Downey Jr- Zach Galifianakis road movie Due Date. Clearly, originality is not one of Chalo Dilli’s strong points.

To be honest, the first half of Chalo Dilli throws up some fun moments. From the moment she gets caught in a traffic jam en route to the airport and a chaddi lands smack on her windshield from a stranger’s suitcase that has split open in the middle of the road, Mihika — a high-flying Mumbai investment banker modelled on Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada — knows that the day has begun on an ominous note. A diverted flight, a drunk driver and a BlackBerry low on battery means she has to partner Manu, a boorish Karol Bagh cloth merchant to reach Delhi. The nonk-jhonk between the two, though repetitive after a while, gets the guffaws going. Particularly memorable is the scene in which he draws a common thread through their careers — “Aap American dollar bechte ho, main American georgette!” — and the one in which she accidentally dunks his cellphone in a bowl of kaali dal after spying a cockroach.

Their gradual dependence on each other is endearing, but the OCD-afflicted Mihika’s overnight change of habit and attitude — from cringing at shaking hands with strangers to sipping tea from a stained cup — lacks credibility. And the cliches — Bengalis chomping rosogollas to boorish and loud Dilliwallas — are a mile long. But the biggest saving grace? Chalo Dilli desists from stirring up a romance between the two. For her, she is “Bhaisaab”; for him, she is “Behenji”.

Despite its predictability and ho-hum second half, it is Vinay Pathak who makes Chalo Dilli watchable. Over the top and unabashed but with his heart in the right place, Manu Gupta is as endearing and as funny as Dasvidaniya’s Amar Kaul. The only problem? Even Pathak’s goofy goodness grates after a while, especially in the climax that shamelessly targets the tear ducts. Lara Dutta is as predictable as the film. And what can one say about Akshay Kumar? His films are unbearable nowadays and now even his cameos are starting to rankle.

Need one good reason to watch Chalo Dilli this weekend? Yana Gupta gyrating to Laila main Laila somewhere towards the end. But you need to trudge through the rest of Chalo Dilli before that.