Bollywood has churned out love triangles with astonishing regularity over the decades. Whether it's two guys loving the same girl or two girls falling for one guy, there's been little attempt at updating the formula except for changes in cast. Sadly, director Suneel Darshan doesn't rock the boat with Barsaat (The Rain), yet another old-fashioned romance where two predictably triumphs over three. Starring Bobby Deol, Bipasha Basu and Priyanka Chopra, this ménage-à-trois is an even bigger wash out than the film's title.

The tired proceedings are kicked off with car designer Arav (Deol) falling for Anna (Basu) when their eyes meet across a BMW showroom in the States. One engagement later, the pair are planning which four-wheel drive to buy when Arav receives a call from his ailing father to come back to India. But once home, he has to face up to Kajal (Chopra), the girl he'd been forced to marry before jetting off to the US. Cue Arav's quandary: oppose tradition and divorce a wife he barely knows but likes, or jilt his gorgeous girlfriend?

"OUTDATED CONSERVATIVE ETHOS"

Either way, Deol's lack of chemistry with Basu and Chopra fails to make you care which of the two lovely ladies he will pick in the end, even though the answer is as hackneyed as the wet sari song and dance numbers that pepper the film. The blame lies entirely at Darshan's feet, with his conventional treatment failing to disguise his own unimaginative screenplay. But Barsaat's biggest disappointment lies not in its mediocrity, but its outdated conservative ethos, which is blatantly out of synch with contemporary India.

In Hindi with English subtitles