Too much masala, too little meat

Luv Shuv Te Chicken Khurana

U/A; Comedy

Director: Sameer Sharma

Cast: Kunal Kapoor, Huma Qureshi, Vinod Nagpal, Rajesh Sharma, Munish Mukhija

Rating: Two stars (out of five)

Char aane ki murgi, baarah aane ka masala! In a nutshell, that's what Luv Shuv Te Chicken Khurana is all about.

To be frank, the roti-shoti, the pind da setting and the elaborate discourse on Punjabi excesses that we once enjoyed in films like Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge is not so humourous anymore. To add to this, a really slow poke plot.

Omi (Kunal Kapoor) is a crook/opportunist living in UK, always in search of a fast buck. For some inexplicable reason, he has ended up borrowing 50,000 pounds from some UK don always dressed in white (Munish Mukhija). Well, the don wants his money back and Omi doesn't have any. He promises to get the money from back home in Punjab since his grandfather runs a very successful dhaba there. The Don very conveniently books him a return ticket to Punjab on his own expense.

Kunal Kapoor and Huma Qureshi inu00a0Luv Shuv Te Chicken Khurana.

Omi comes home to find that his family is as loving and generous as ever but not as financially well-off as he imagined. His grandfather has been ill since Omi ran away with the family gold and because nobody else knows how their dhaba's signature dish Chicken Khurana is made, the dhaba has closed down. Plus the neighbourhood soni kudi Harman (Huma Qureshi) who he once sent love letters to is now betrothed to his cousin. There doesn't seem to be a way out of Omi's crisis till he manages to find out the one secret ingredient that makes Chicken Khurana so special and revive the family dhaba. But how will he pay off the Big UK Don then?

Kunal Kapoor looks quite an unwilling protagonist. Huma Qureshi puts in a spirited performance, and so does Rajesh Sharma as the psycho-mama Titu. Chicken Khurana has the right ingredients but it takes really really long to cook. Till then, director Sameer Sharma is just content to stir once in a while. It takes well into the second half for the film to pick up any sort of pace only to lead to a rather predictable climax. All in all, too little meat to this chicken. u00a0