Fifteen minutes into the movie, I was transported into nostalgia-land. How many of you have done plays in college, spoofing Hindi movies? You sit in a room two nights before annual day, brainstorm a script with a hero (usually two misplaced twins), a couple of heroines and some villains, use gags from a whole bunch of Hindi films with crazy, idiotic dialogues, then rehearse for a day or two and eventually ad-lib your way through the play even if everyone forgets his/her lines. Baadshah is in that class - a tacky, conceived-in-a-single-session movie, spoofing other movies and itself, with a 70s kind of production-feel.

The movie starts with a zany, psychedelic sequence in which Shahrukh, playing Baadshah, a small-time detective, goes to a gambling den to recover some stolen diamonds for a client. He has four other sidekicks including Johny Lever as his main assistant. He succeeds in recovering these diamonds, and the ensuing publicity lands him a couple of more jobs. In his next assignment, he meets Twinkle. He has to woo her and then leave her so that she will agree to marry his client on the rebound. Predictably, they fall in love, but Shahrukh has to dump her as per his contract and they break-up. His next job takes him to Goa to rescue a client's kidnapped child. He is confused with a CBI operative also code-named Baadshah and as a result gets mixed-up in an assassination plot on the lady chief minister of Goa, Gayatri Bachchan. He again meets Twinkle, who is now an under-cover agent. Together they manage to work their way through the kidnapping and the assassination.

Baadshah is a caricatured comic-detective. There are just two sequences in which Shahrukh gets melodramatic and emotional, and these jar. The rest of the times, the movie is a patch-work of gags strung together to form the story-line. The movie spoofs the noir genre, James Bond and the old Jeetendra 303 and Dheeraj Kumar films (does anyone remember those), in a "Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro" style. Funny guns, stupid gadgets for the desi "Bond" (toffee bombs, chipkali shoes), sexy women, dumb villains and wise-ass sidekicks add to the flavor. There are funny take-offs on the Ambanis, Tatas and of all people, Bill Clinton. But, like all Hindi movies, it is too long, its pace falters every now and then, it has one song too many and it uses those stupid European settings for the song-and-dance routines.

The movie works because of Shahrukh and his unfettered energy and unrestrained hamming. Twinkle unfortunately, just about manages (my moms were right). Her only assets are her "assets" - there is probably no scene where her cleavage is not on display (and I thought Sushmita had the implants). And, if she is not wearing mini-skirts, then her pants start at her panty-line. Amrish Puri's character is the biggest disappointment. Being the main villain, he also should have been caricatured, like everyone else. With stronger characterization and better dialogues, he would have made a big difference, especially in a movie such as this. Shashikala playing Shahrukh's mother, is a pleasant surprise, but she has only three scenes and not much to do. Johny Lever as Ramlal, Shahukh's assistant delivers his usual deadpan one-liners and thankfully, doesn't irritate. Rakhi plays Gayatri Bachchan, the chief minister of Goa, an obvious take-off on the Rajmata of Jaipur, her name offering the chance for a couple of one-liners on the Bachchans.

One criterion which helps me rate a movie is its ability to make me laugh. Considering how serious our lives our, anything that makes us laugh has to be worth something. This movie made me laugh every ten minutes or so (helped by the giggly teenage girls behind me, who couldn't stop squealing and tittering at every comic moment) - sometimes with it, many times at it. In the end though, I felt good coming out of the theatre. And after all those gorgeous-looking, colorful movies with gorgeous music, gorgeous clothes and enough triangles to stress out a geometry graduate, or violent movies with revenge themes, incessant fights and enough blood-letting to keep ketchup companies in business for years, this movie is a refreshing change. Abbas-Mustan, known for their gratuitously violent movies (Daraar, Soldier), have for once managed something nice and different.

Don't get me wrong. The movie is stupid and idiotic in many places. It has low production values and a bad heroine. The songs are less than mediocre. But it redeems itself by being funny and different. Not in a cerebral, Woody Allen manner, but in a tacky, whacky way. And if Adam Sandler, Mike Myers and Jim Carrey can do it, so can Shahrukh and Baadshah. It is worth a "dekho".