I won’t mince words here. Watching Vipul Shah’s London Dreams should be legitimized as a form of torture by the folks at correctional services. That’s how bad it was. No, really.

Let me tell you the story before I get back to ripping it apart. It revolves around two childhood friends, Arjun (Ajay Devgan) and Manu (Salman Khan), living somewhere in the fields of Punjab. Music runs in both their families, but is cherished only in Manu’s, who couldn’t care less about it. Arjun, on the other hand, has the stereotypical Bollywood dreams of becoming “Maayi ka Laal Jaikishan,” but of course, his family is dead against it. Why, you ask? Oh, because many years ago, his folk-singer grandfather had been invited to sing in London, and could not perform because of stage fright and then killed himself over it. No, I did not just make that up. That’s the story. Apparently, stage fright is reason enough for you to commit suicide.

Anyway, so after his father’s sudden and inexplicable death, Arjun leaves Punjab to go to London with his uncle. Of course, as soon as he reaches Heathrow, he runs away from his uncle (his last familial obstacle on his path to musical success) and magically survives on the street of London all by himself. Sorry, not magically. He plays the flute. And enrolls himself in the City College of Music by handing over a bag of pennies. And grows up. And forms a band with sidekicks Zoheb (Rannvijay Singh) and Wasim (Aditya Roy Kapur). Just when you start thinking that there are way too many men out there for this to be a true Bollywood movie, along comes pretty, pretty Priya (Asin), who Arjun instantly falls for. A Bharatnatyam dancer in front of Appa and hip-hop dancer behind his back, Priya quickly becomes a dancer for the band. Oh, and they call themselves London Dreams.

But no, the band isn’t complete yet. Its fifth member is – surprise surprise – Manu, who unfortunately for him, is still rotting away in the fields of Bhatinda, and accruing debt on his ISD calls to Arjun, which he makes at a nauseous frequency. Manu lies about getting married, gets Arjun to come visit him, Arjun hears him sing, pays off all his debt and invites him to London to join the band. That’s when the trouble starts. You see, Arjun is the one with The Sapna (Dream), but Bhagwaan gave Manu all The Hunar (Talent). And eventually, The Ladki (Girl). Tsk tsk. What follows is a series of events that could very well be likened to a shady saas-bahu serial, where one woman is devilishly plotting away against the innocent other. Except that these are men we are dealing with here.

The film was just wrong on so many levels. Think about the casting. I’m sorry, but a clip-on earring does not make Ajay Devgan a convincing rockstar. Far from it. Devgan is far too old, serious and intense an actor to sit well in a rockstar-ish mould, which is why, he gets tolerable once he dons The Evil Hat in the second half. His maturity carried him through some very poorly written and insultingly predictable dialogues. Asin, on the other hand, was a total waste, at least in the first half, where all she did was look pretty, dance provocatively and pretentiously smirk at Manu’s village-boyness. She doesn’t get to cry till the very end, which is surprising for a cheesy Bollywood flick. The saving grace? Salman Khan. He seemed to be the only close-to-appropriate choice the casting director made.

Khan gave the film its few humorous moments (although if the rest of the movie is any standard, then I must I have a poor sense of humour). His character stood out from the rest, partly due to the way it was scripted and partly due to Khan’s performance. He seemed to have the hang of how to be a dumb, innocent, full-of-love Punjabi village boy whose life seems to irritatingly center on his friendship with Arjun. And to be honest, at least till the interval, that’s the only relationship that seems real, especially in contrast to the Priya-Arjun duo, who seemed to have become thick in about 10 milliseconds. One minute, they’ve just met. The next, he’s in love with her. Yeah, right.

Oh, and let me not forget the music. I am the biggest fan of the Bollywood way of doing things, where every movie is sprinkled with songs that vary in terms of emotion and style. But London Dream’s music was hard to sit through. Considering that the movie is about music (think Rock On), you would expect that they’d at least get that part right. But nope, the Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy trio grandly disappoint. Their music fails to inspire, fails to make you dance, fails to make you cry, heck, even fails to plain entertain. It does, however, make you want to press the forward button.

The movie’s greatest failure, and probably this is what it all boils down to, is that it is as unconvincing as it can get. You’re left there asking yourself, “But wait, how did that happen? I thought he/she was (fill in with appropriate detail)” after every second scene. You hope that the movie will explain something somehow, and you wait. Only to be disappointed. Not only are you left high and dry, you also have to deal with the tiring predictability of the details you are provided.

A movie that could have been a tolerable depiction of ambition, jealousy and friendship, is reduced to an insult to your intelligence, thanks to how run-of-the-mill and badly made it is. London Dreams is nothing but a vomit of stereotypes that fails to convince or entertain. It does, however, irritate you enough for you to be able to write a scathing, venomous review, which is useful in its own way, I guess. Take my advice: avoid this film like the plague; do something better with your 2.5 hours and the hundred-odd rupees you’ll spend watching it. You’ll thank me later on.