Purani Jeans is the kind of film where you can go on your first date, have your first kiss and your first fight, make up and break up, and yet the movie refuses to get over. It’s old wine in older bottle and the bottle is cracked and the wine has turned into vinegar!

Clearly director Tanushri Chattrji Bassu hasn’t given as much importance to the script of her film as she has to the spelling of her name. Best friends turning into two opposite ends of a love triangle, Purani Jeans is not only a done-to-zombie subject but the writing and the handling of the scenes are so juvenile that you wonder how such projects get green-lit in these times.

Sidharth Ray (Tanuj Virwani), who keeps jogging around Manhattan, has to come back to his hometown in Kasauli after his mother’s (real-life mom Rati Agnihotri) death, thus igniting a couple of hours of eminently forgettable memories. Memories of 21-year-olds behaving like eight-year-olds, calling themselves Kasauli Cowboys, and jumping around the hills reciting strange rhymes.

The dude of the group is the London-returned Sam (Aditya Seal) whose mother (Sarika) is perpetually drunk and whose stepfather (Rajit Kapur) is perpetually calling out for Bahadur. Bahadur the butler from Nepal. Yes, the genes of this film is that purani! And Sam keeps giving Wiki gyan about Jim Morrison to everyone. Bhai, gaana toh Mika hi gaayega.

Anyway, Nayantara’s (Izabelle Leite) big Brazilian eyes ensure that Sid and Sam, who are otherwise a little too “happy together”, eventually don’t see eye to eye. By then if you are still awake, there is a death in the past and clearing of misunderstandings in the present and hopefully no such bhule-bisre films in the future.

Tanuj, who had debuted in the equally unwatchable Luv U Soniyo, is intense and can own the frame but needs to pick better films. Aditya, who had seen Manisha Koirala’s thunder thighs in Ek Chhoti Si Love Story more than a decade ago, has a likeable presence. As for Izabelle, she should go back home and watch the World Cup.

Cinematographer Sunil Patel and music composer Ram Sampath ensure that the difficult ride is at least easy on the eyes and the ears. There’s, in fact, a beautiful Sona Mahapatra song called Dil aaj kal.

Talking of songs, Purani Jeans was actually quite an earworm of a track in the mid-1990s sung by Pakistani singer Ali Haider. Buffer the song; skip the film. That old number has aged less than this new release.