After making hit Bollywood comedies like Dil and Masti, you'd think Indra Kumar would know a thing or two about humour. Alas the director's latest film, Pyare Mohan, isn't a patch on his previous efforts. The lead characters played by Vivek Oberoi and Fardeen Khan are clearly inspired by Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor's blind and deaf duo from See No Evil, Hear No Evil, but sadly that's where the similarity ends. A mishmash of silly slapstick and caricatures, there's more than a whiff of pantomime about this feeble farce.

After an accident on a film set leaves stuntmen Pyare (Khan) and Mohan (Oberoi) blind and deaf, the friends set up a gift shop business. It's not an obvious career move, but one that brings love to their doorstep in the form of sisters Preeti (Esha Deol) and Priya (Amrita Rao). At first the girls aren't interested, but they soon change their minds when they are rescued from a Bangkok prison and the clutches of mafia don (Boman Irani). Just how the lads manage this, as well as shake a leg in the compulsory song and dance sequences, takes more than a little stretch of imagination. But hey, this is Bollywood!

"AS ANNOYING AS CHIPMUNKS"

You would literally need to be visually impaired or hard of hearing to believe or care enough to laugh at the juvenile scrapes Pyare and Mohan endure for the sake of Preeti and Priya, who are as annoying as a couple of chipmunks. But it's the way that Khan and Oberoi periodically forget they are actually supposed to be playing blind and deaf that really takes the biscuit. At first it's hilarious but the novelty soon wears off.