One wonders when our Tollywood directors will tire of making meaningless potboilers with done-to-death stories, silly dialogues and appalling music.

Anup Sengupta’s latest romance-and-revenge-rolled-into-one Badla is an insipid tale of a mother-son relationship gone wrong.

Prosenjit (Arjun) loves his Ma (Anamika Saha) more than dear life, but his evil elder brothers won’t let him get a piece of the family property. So they team up with their wicked Mama (late Kunal Mitra) to label Arjun a thief. Deprived of mommy’s cuddles and kisses, Arjun divides his time between singing songs in the village temple and beating up the baddies.

This drags for about half-an-hour till a dolled-up Moubani (Nanda) appears with her funny Mama (Subhashish Mukherjee) by her side. The two manage a few gags with their antics — she in short dresses and he in red-and-yellow trousers. Then the urban girl falls for the village boy and they tie the knot. Post-interval, Arjun teaches the villains a lesson and reunites with his mother.

Playing a goon-bashing mommy’s boy is now a blind-fold act for Prosenjit. But it’s sad to see Moubani’s screen presence in her debut film being limited to just a few song-and-dance sequences.

Anamika Saha hams from the first frame to the last, but we guess that’s why she is the pop pick as the hero’s mom in most potboilers. The late Kunal Mitra is convincing as the scheming uncle. And the less we talk about Priyo Chattopadhyay’s music, the better.

The icing on a stale cake — Jisshu Sengupta matching steps with two girls in an item song! But that’s just five minutes of the two-hour-forty-five minutes of pure pain.