DIRECTOR: Willard Carroll

An American actress, and an Indian choreographer meet in Goa. She is called Marigold. Yeah, yeah, like the flower, only prettier. Lots of characters in the movie tells us so many times over, just in case anybody missed the point the first time. He is called, what else, Prem. She’s got two left feet and a bad attitude. He is sunny, and psychic, and dances like a dream.

Willard Carroll parlays this slender thread of an idea into a movie being touted as Salman Khan’s Hollywood debut. So what we get is this: Salman playing second fiddle to the obnoxious Bollywood hero on the sets (he’s just the choreographer, remember?), and holding out a caring shoulder for Marigold to cry on when she finds the going too tough. Ooh, that must have been tough for him.

Carroll tries to be warm and affectionate towards Indian culture and Bollywood, but the film is riddled with clichés. Prem is just masquerading as a common dance-master, see? He’s actually a royal, with a sprawling riyasat in Rajasthan. In other words, Marigold’s Indian Prince Charming. In the second half, we get a bunch of actors playing princes and princesses — at lavish lunch on the lawns of a Jodhpur mahal, liveried retainers in the background, and a glittering mehendi ceremony on the sands. They are at Prem’s sister’s wedding, see?

Maybe because it’s been in the works for a long time, Marigold doesn’t feel fresh. Ali Larter’s ugly American (it’s everybody else’s fault that she’s got fired, and that her luggage got lost on the flight in, and that her boy friend is back home, while she is in Goa and Mumbai and Jodhpur, finding the real Marigold hidden deep inside her) doesn’t either. The character is as limp as the film.

Salman tries hard at being a regular-guy-despite-his-lineage, wearing salmon pink shirts in the first half, and heavy chikan kurtas after, when he is rumbled. If you’ve ever heard him speak a couple of English lines in his movies and marvelled at his amrikan accent, well, here’s your chance, to hear him do the thing through the film.

Be warned, there’s a Hindi version (dubbed) out there, too.