Direction: Prem Soni

Main Aurr Mrs Khanna is what they call a "home production" in Bollywood slang. It's the kind of film a star agrees to do in exchange for a fat salary that pays for his or her dream home. When the deal is so good, you don't raise questions about the script.

That's the best explanation, and in fact the only one you can think of to understand why Salman Khan or Kareena Kapoor would participate in a film as lame as this one.

Written and directed by debutant Prem Soni, Main Aurr Mrs Khanna stars Salman and Kareena as Samir and Raina, a Melbourne-based couple whose loving marriage hits the rocks when he loses his job and decides to move to Singapore to pursue a new one. For reasons that are never clearly explained in the film, Mr Khanna decides his Mrs can't accompany him there, and arranges for her to return to his parents back home in India.

Mrs, however, decides to stay back in Melbourne and seeks out a job at the airport. She's befriended by Sohail Khan who plays Akash, a waiter at the airport café, who soon finds himself falling for her. Before he can tell her though, her husband is back, now all loaded, and ready to take her with him.

There are dumb scripts and dumber scripts, but Main Aurr Mrs Khanna has got to be the dumbest. You feel nothing for the film's characters because you cannot understand why they behave the way they do. It's the kind of screenplay in which every obstacle in the characters' lives could be overcome by having one sensible conversation which for some strange reason, they never have.

Preity Zinta makes an embarrassing cameo as a Pakistani mujra artiste who's employed by Akash to seduce Mr Khanna so his Mrs might think poorly of him. Forget how that situation ends up playing out in the film, poor Preity is saddled with a thankless item song and such cheesy dialogue, she ought to demand damages.

Salman Khan in rust-brown hair and sleepy eyes looks like he really doesn't want to be in this film at all, while Kareena Kapoor at least makes the effort to dress lovely. Neither, however, contributes anything that can described as a performance. A few comic moments are provided by Sohail Khan whose facial gymnastics are probably the only thing worth mentioning about this film, in addition to that one hummable song Don't say Alvida.

I'm going with one out of five and a thumbs down for director Prem Soni's Main Aurr Mrs Khanna; it's a mystery how films like this get made.

Rating: 1 / 5