Masand's verdict: Jaan-e-mann jars

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Direction: Shirish Kunder

Cast: Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar and Preity Zinta

As difficult as it is to believe, I think my hair turned a little more grey while watching Jaan-e-mann this week. Walking out of the cinema as the lights came back, I felt like I'd been in there for what seemed like an eternity.

Debutant director Shirish Kunder's sweeping romantic saga stars Salman Khan as a failed actor who's lost pretty much everything including his lovely wife Preity Zinta because of his own foolishness. The two are now divorced and stay in different parts of the world - him in Mumbai, her in New York - but Salman can't cough up the alimony he must pay her.

He figures the only way he can escape that responsibility is if Preity were to remarry. So Salman sets out to help simple simon Akshay Kumar in wooing Preity and just when she begins falling for Akshay, Salman himself starts falling in love with Preity again.

Much in the tradition of most David Dhawan no-brainers, Jaan-e-mann, too, is intended as a masala entertainer with ample doses of romance, comedy and drama. But because it's built on a ridiculous premise, the plot of Jaan-e-mann and its amateurish screenplay are really the film's biggest shortcomings.

Full of holes from start to finish, the script leaves so many basic questions unanswered - why doesn't Akshay realise that it's Preity's ex-husband who's been helping him win over Preity even after she tells him in such detail about her marriage and subsequent divorce?

How can Preity be demanding alimony from Salman when she doesn't even know where he is and what he's up to after they separate? In such technologically advanced times as these, why is Salman sending correspondence by snail mail when a simple email or a text message would have done the trick? And really, if Preity's brother has been hiding Salman's letters from her, surely you'd have expected him to find a safer hiding place than a spot in the library that even a family friend knows about.

But I can't believe I'm searching for logic in a film like this!