STORY: A Punjabi girl and a Sindhi groom are to have a destination wedding in Britain. Simultaneously, the bride’s sister also gets romantically entangled with the wedding planner.

REVIEW: Shaandaar has a fun plot. However in his attempt to spoof destination weddings of the bankrupt and the famous, Vikas Bahl, (who also directed that gem, Queen) forgot to take a script along.

You can defend the director’s indulgence or even forgive him for borrowing Tarantino’s Kill-Bill, part-animation, part-live narrative style to tell you the tale of an orphan girl who is given shelter by an affluent businessman, Bipin (Pankaj Kapur). The tycoon’s harridan mum (Sushma Seth) and ambitious wife (Nikki Aneja) do not take a shine to the child. Even worse, the bechari anath is an insomniac. The story-telling attempt is wearisome. Years later, Bipin’s belligerent mother decides to get his daughter, Isha (Sanah Kapur) married into a rich Sindhi family called Fundwanis (howlarious!). This ‘deal’ has to go through or they will remain cash-strapped for life. Everyone is scared shit of ‘mummyji” so they abide by what she says.

The ridiculous plot, allows one real romance to also blossom. This one is between Alia (Alia), who we later discover is Bipin’s illegitimate daughter (damn, one should have known) and the wedding planner, Jagjinder Joginder, JJ (Shahid).

A happy coincidence—like Alia, JJ also suffers from a sleep disorder. So the two of them take midnight swims, befriend a frog, go horse-riding, and befriend bugs or even better, they dance to an array of songs— like the catchy ‘Gulabo’ or the all-time favourite 50s ditty, ‘Eena meena deeka.’

If you think this review is incoherent, feel free to blame it on the film. Apart from some LOL jokes when the characters resort to abbreviations like PP (pairi pauna) or FTB (father-of-the-bride), this film serves up trite. Shahid, Pankaj and Sanah (the Kapur khandaan) went along for an all-expenses-paid vacation. And Alia, who saw Queen before she boarded the flight, was none the wiser.

Seriously, how was anyone to guess that this is a cruel joke played by Bahl on his investors and perhaps on an unsuspecting audience.