It was contrived, unfunny and a sad excuse for a movie.

One would think after his performances in Munnabhai and Waisa Bhi Hota Hai, Arshad Warsi would be at liberty to be more picky about the roles.

John (Ashish Choudhary), Sidh (Arshad Warsi) and Amit (Yash Tonk) are best buddies. John loves Natasha (Aarti Chhabria) but can't tell her that. When she goes on a world tour, he's heartbroken and meets Sheetal (Udita Goswami) and soon turns into a henpecked boyfriend. Sheetal with the help of Ricky Ponting keeps Sidh and Amit away from John.

AK47 (Shakti Kapoor) is the bad guy while Chameli aka Julie (Shweta Menon) is a prostitute who helps Sidh and Amit.

How they get John out of Sheetal's clutches and back into Natasha's is what the movie is about. Their efforts are ridiculous and well, just ridiculous.

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra wasn’t kidding when he said he has tried to recapture the magic of Chandni Chowk.

The movie was more about him revisiting the narrow bylanes of Chandni Chowk and the colourful characters who call it their home, while the story is almost an afterthought. It's only in the second part of the movie that a plot starts taking shape.

He has cleverly used the Monkey Man mayhem that shook the nation (we are a nation that shakes for just about anything) a couple of years ago to bring to the fore the real issue of communal violence.

Abhishek Bacchan’s cool dude act grates the nerves and you get the feeling he promoting a Motorola cell phone which he waves around all the time. Sonam Kapoor looks adorable, hats off to whoever designed her look for the movie.

Pran Chopra, Om Puri, Waheeda Rehman, Amitabh Bacchan, Rishi Kapoor are the other stars along with MTV VJ Cyrus Sahukar as a womanizing photographer, Vijay Raaz as a meanie cop and Range De Basanti’s Atul Kulkarni as a cowering fella who finds his voice.

Roshan (Abhishek Bacchan), who is the product of a Hindu-Muslim marriage, takes grandma (Waheeda Rehman) home as she wants to die there. He is left amused and bemused by the cacophony of Delhi 6 – jalebis, pigeons (that fly prettily but never shit on your head), cows, qawwali, the Ram Leela and the eventual showdown with an almost Rang De Basanti ending.

The movie’s a visual treat and Mehra has added a nice touch in the way he has juxtaposed the Ram Leela and later brought in the supposed madman who holds a mirror to everyone’s face.

Bottomline, there is a monkey within all of us.

A timepass movie. No more, no less.