MACHINE (U/A)
Director: Abbas-Mustan
Cast: Mustafa Burmawala, Kiara Advani, Ronit Roy, Johny Lever 
Running time: 148 minutes

Tonight, go back home and take a long and hard look at your almirah. The chances of it springing to life are brighter than Mustafa, the leading man of Machine, getting some life on to that face. 

Yes, there’s no easy way to put it — Mustafa is wooden and Machine an unmitigated disaster. 

Directors Abbas-Mustan —Mustafa is Abbas’s son and makes his debut here — rehash their old hit Baazigar, right down to race cars and heroines being thrown off heights. But Mustafa is no Shah Rukh Khan and the debutant is more comic than anti-hero in a film that should have never been made. 

It isn’t easy figuring out a mind-numbing film like Machine. Georgia is passed off as Himachal Pradesh, students do everything else in college but study and songs keep popping up every time the makers run out of corny lines like “Main tumhare hothon ki lipstick zaroor kharaab karoonga, lekin tumhare aankhon ka kajal nahin.” More often than not, it’s Mustafa who is made to look into the camera in slo-mo, pull off his reflective glares and mouth these unintentionally laugh-out-loud lines. 

The threadbare plot starts off with rich-girl-with-heart-of-gold Sarah (Kiara Advani) bumping into Ransh (Mustafa). It’s love at first sight and after a few #facepalm romantic scenes and half-a-dozen filler songs, the two — still in college — get married. But this is an Abbas-Mustan film and so twist toh banta hai, boss! Just like SRK tossed Shilpa Shetty off a building in Baazigar, Ransh pushes Sarah off a cliff (no spoiler, this) just before interval point. Why? By that time, Machine has numbed us to the point of not really caring. 

Slick in visuals, but stodgy in storytelling, Machine tries every formula in the Bolly book — twin brothers to returning from the dead — but simply ends up torturing the viewer over 148 minutes. 

The performances range from bad to terrible. Ronit Roy sleepwalks through his psycho dad role and the normally dependable Johny Lever fails to bring on even a single laugh. Kiara Advani — with a massive Deepika Padukone hangover — treats film set as catwalk, jumping in and out of outfits, but doing little else.

What’s worse? Machine murders iconic numbers like Chatur naar and Tu cheez badi hai mast mast. 

Still trying to figure out if Machine is worth a watch? Let’s just say the tobacco disclaimer at the beginning is less cringeworthy.

Priyanka Roy