Does Khaali Peeli justify the 300 bucks one needs to cough up to watch it in the new normal, pay-per-view format? No. Is the experience novel, given that we haven’t seen the face of a multiplex in more than half a year now?

Well, just about.

Released on Zee Plex on Friday — the first launch for the all-new platform — Khaali Peeli arrived with a whole lot of plex familiarity — designated show timings, the National Anthem being played out at the beginning of every show and Akshay Kumar with his gummy smile berating Nandu for spending Rs 10 on a cigarette and not on a sanitary napkin. There was an interval too, but barely two minutes long. And no, there was thankfully no Lyra Leggings jingle to sit through. All this, while plonked on my bed at home. New normal?
You bet.

There is, however, nothing novel about Khaali Peeli, which has template, theme and trope that’s as old as Bollywood itself. Wait, there’s something new. A disclaimer at the beginning states, “The cockroach shown in the film was created using computer graphics”. Is the world now outraging over cockroaches being swatted out of existence? Well, then we all need to do time behind bars.

“Guy Ritchie with a Bhindi Bazaar vibe” is how director Maqbool Khan had chosen to describe Khaali Peeli to The Telegraph. We buy the Bhindi Bazaar bit — there are some awesome night shots of the city that never sleeps and a kind of manic energy — but this is more Abbas-Mustan’s Race than Guy Ritchie’s Snatch. The plot twists are lame for the most part, and there is practically nothing in Khaali Peeli that is guaranteed to keep you invested for two hours.

Aiming to perhaps be an ode to the ’80s masala films, Khaali Peeli has a tapori hero pummeling 10 guys to pulp with a single sweep of his hand, a heroine channeling Geet from Jab We Met (who, since 2007, has been ordained the patron saint of the ‘bubbly Bolly belle’) and a villain who barks much more than he bites. The leading man (Ishaan Khatter) is even called Vijay Chauhan, perhaps as a nod to Amitabh Bachchan’s Vijay Dinanath Chauhan in Agneepath.

What it lacks, however, is the flamboyance and irreverence that comes with the territory. Khaali Peeli is no Dabangg or Singham. It aims for masala but it also aspires to be slick and smart. It ends up being nowhere. Twenty minutes in, we gave up trying to keep track of the film’s timeline jumps that came accompanied with bold fonts like “10 years earlier”, “20 hours ago”, “35 minutes later”, all quite unnecessarily. Bhindi Bazaar meets Steven Soderbergh?

Ishaan’s Vijay is, however, not called Vijay in the film. He’s Blackie, given he would sell movie tickets in black as a kid. Growing up in the red-light area of the city, under the aegis of the local goon-cum-pimp Yusuf (Jaideep Ahlawat), Blackie takes a fancy to young Pooja, who grows up in the brothel. The two go on cycle rides together and watch movies holding hands. It’s possibly the year 1997, given we get to see posters and screen moments from Gupt and Dil To Pagal Hai. But right between the two, there’s Sunny Deol bellowing his lungs out in Gadar, that released in 2001, a fact that Team Khaali Peeli probably overlooked while travelling back and forth (or is there a Dark-styled time-loop in there somewhere?). And yes, when a film doesn’t have anything to offer, you start watching the films within that film. For the record, that ‘dance of envy’ sequence in Dil To Pagal Hai still rocks.

We digress. Well, Pooja grows up to be Ananya Panday, and Blackie becomes a street-smart cabbie and they run into one another one night, and then promptly are on the run from Yusuf. Unlike the damsels in distress in films typical of this genre, Pooja, thankfully, has some agency, landing a few thwacks whenever the occasion demands. Despite the questionable Mumbaiyya accent, both Ishaan and Ananya are earnest, but lack the all-out flamboyance that’s needed for a film like this.

Jaideep Ahlawat gets to show his shiny hair and solid acting chops and Satish Kaushik pops in with a fun cameo. The background score has some pizzazz, but Vishal-Shekhar’s numbers travel the gamut from ho-hum to zzzzz. The rest of Khaali Peeli? ZZZZZZ!

Khaali Peeli perhaps came to life with the writers hitting upon the idea of word-playing Mumbai’s iconic kaali peeli cabs. Khaali Peeli?

Exactly the point (or the lack of it) of this film’s existence.

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