It’s apt that this film is called Love Khichdi, for it never manages to rise above its name. It remains a melting pot of lots of characters and lots of accents — but unlike the best khichdi, it never comes together.

This is the story of how Vir Pratap Singh (Randeep Hooda) — a lovable (or so we presume) rake with a really bad colour job (check out the brown tuft on top), who works as a sous chef at a five-star hotel — makes a hash of that emotion called love. It’s a tried and tested formula. Add a womaniser to lots of women — some married, some underage, and one ‘simple middle-class girl’ who loves him despite it all — and you get a love story. In fact, you may even get a reasonably palatable love story. You know, in the same way khichdi is palatable and soothing, but never really out of this world.

So, Vir hangs out with the pretty and demure Sandhya (Sada) from the front office, hits on Sharmistha Bose (Rituparna Sengupta) who owns a bookstore at the hotel, eyes the nubile 16-year-old Deepti (Riya Sen), fantasises about man-hating maid Sonali Kulkarni and is led on by next-door bhabi Divya Dutta. Oh wait, we forgot the vegetarian giraffe Jesse Randhawa and chick-in-power-suit Nafisa Khan (Kalpana Pandit). How do you know they are all interested in him? Because they ask him his zodiac sign, silly! When his advances meet a modicum of reciprocation from Nafisa, he is left feeling “used” when she says “I’ll call you” and walks out.

Sharmistha Bose is the woman who almost breaks his heart. She’s intellectual (ahem), runs a book shop, wears a lot of ethnic clothing, falls into bed with him willingly and doesn’t even want an ‘I love you’ in return. But, of course, that too doesn’t work. Why? Sharmistha decides to go back to her husband. Yes, she is married.

Thus he is brooding at home when Sandhya lands up with cake and candles. It’s his birthday and she’s the only girl who knows about it. She even asks him to marry her. He says no, of course. Does he see the error of his ways? If you still don’t know the answer then you probably deserve to watch this two-and-a-half-hour yawn.

Then there is the acting. Randeep’s problem is that he is artificial throughout. There’s no difference between his prepared speech at the mandap and the heartfelt rant away from it. Sada’s Sandhya is forgettable. Rituparna’s Sharmistha looks a little scary (maybe that is why Vir compares her to Kali). Her foundation looks cake-y and her eye make-up is OTT. But she looks good in the long shots and she actually emotes. Which is more than we can say for most of the cast, aside from Sonali Kulkarni, who is perfect as the loud-mouth Marathi bai and Riya Sen, who is believable as the nubile, bratty 16-year-old with an American twang. But they didn’t have too many lines. And what was Randeep doing through the film? We don’t know... we didn’t wake up in time to find out.