With 'Isn't It Romantic', Priyanka Chopra hits rock bottom

Mumbai: First things first. What is Priyanka Chopra doing playing a frisky floozie in this bird-turd of a film?

Second question: Why are we expected to invest 90 minutes in what looks like a rejected episode of Inside Amy Schumer?

Isn’t It Romantic is just plainly and simply awful. A bird-brained plot, it casts the overweight Rebel Wilson as Natalie who is shown as incurably romantic in her childhood(she watches Pretty Woman like a Delhi housewife eyeing the lead singer at a Mata ka Jagran). Mom lectures little Natalie on romantic love in this cynical world. And voila! Beti is transformed into a diehard cynic.

So, the film has a solution. It turns all romantic notions on their head when Natalie hits her head on a steel pillar at a metro station during a mugging session (this is as exciting as the script gets) and waltzes into woozie-land.

Priyanka who plays a femme-fatale is all set to steal away our heroine Natalie’s best friend-and-potential boyfriend Josh (Adama Devine). In what could be described as the most airheaded role of her career Priyanka plays Isabelle. Her job profile is self-described as a “yoga ambassador”(whatever that means) but she seems to spend all her time posing, preening, pouting and seducing Josh, who, as mentioned earlier, is no Don Juan.

With a role that is briefer than the clothes she is given to wear, Priyanka must have a good reason for doing this film. Clueless as we are about her reasons for being in a film where her role is what Aroona Irani played in Hindi films of the 1970s, there is the comfort of the company for Ms. Chopra in Chris Hemsworth whose presence here is even more baffling. He plays a boy in a towel who has to pretend that he finds the leading lady attractive.

With a plot that could be written on one grain of rice (Basmati), characters who think it’s cool to pretend they love to hate onscreen romance, and performances which may strongly qualify for the Razberries, Isn’t It Romantic is right up there with Priyanka Chopra’s desi classics, Suneel Darshan’s Andaz, Dharmesh Darshan’s Aap Ki Khatir, and of course, her Hollywood debut Baywatch.