DIRECTOR: Nagesh Kukunoor

If your plot is completely cuckoo, then your treatment has to be spot on. Nagesh Kukunoor setting a fast-talking Mumbai ka chhora loose upon Bangkok massage parlours, and unsuspecting Thai damsels, should have resulted in unbridled merriment. But Bombay To Bangkok’s is a drag, offering little drama or excitement.

Shankar (Shreyas) nicks a bag full of cash from ‘Mumbai’s most fearsome don’ Khan Seth (Naseer), and finds himself flying out to Thailand in a fake white coat, with a bunch of thugs hotfooting after him. Soon, he is to be found peering at wrinkly nether regions of dirty old men (don't ask), dispensing Viagra to whoops of joy from the selfsame individuals (please don't) and cooking up a steaming batch of desi khana (he's not a doc, he's a cook, see?). This is when he is not searching for his precious loot, and losing his heart to the lovely Jasmine (Lena), and trying to keep his head above the meandering script.

Kukonoor's keen eye for drollery, his true strength, seems to have gone missing. There are enough oddballs in the movie to keep the laughs coming. An overweight, jolly Sardar (Manmeet Singh), translator of Shankar's love-lorn ramblings, a suspicious salwaar-kameez clad psychiatrist who suspects Shankar is not who he is (we could have told you that, missy), and a Mumbai bhai with a rapper's soul (Vijay Maurya ), complete with the rings, gold chains, and the body piercings, and a troubled childhood. But the parts don't add up to the whole.

Maurya is a hoot, making you wish there was more of him. Naseer comes on as if he'd rather be anywhere else, even in his one scene, where he looks nothing like a menacing don. What, this is quid pro for Iqbal? The eminently watchable Shreyas needed more able support: he's all over the place, making you wish there was less of him. The Thai debutant swings nicely between her lady of the night, and medical volunteer by day role, but is done in by the director's insistence on playing out the tag-line — ‘we are same same but different’.

So is the movie.

Mad Money

CAST: Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, Katie Holmes, Ted Danson

director: Callie Khouri

What if Thelma and Louise did it only for the money? What if they went on and on only for the money, starting with some to fix a broken tap? What if that meant money in such amounts that they had to stuff it into garbage bags and bury it? What if they still went on and on, just because they couldn't get caught? And what if their boyfriends, unlike Thelma and Louise's, were supportive, including getting involved in the whole plot?

Mad Money is right. Who doesn't want some extra money? But the problem with money is that you want it for yourself. Seeing three women rob a bank with little more effort than buying duplicate locks, and without much motive other than buying extra clothes, shoes or a trailer bus, isn't likely to leave you feeling very friendly towards them.

Particularly Keaton, who wears expensive suits and jackets to work and then changes into a janitor's drab overalls and cleans toilets, all the while staring suspiciously into surveillance cameras. Is this how the Federal Bank operates?

It is all justified by explaining that what they are stealing are worn-out notes about to be shredded — and hence no one is the wiser for very long — but who are they kidding? Money is money, right?

And it does get you a lot of things — like Callie Khouri (screenwriter of Thelma and Louise), Diane Keaton, Katie Holmes, Queen Latifah and Ted Danson in the same film. What you do with it is entirely up to you. These are all award-winning talents who could have brought their money's worth to Mad Money, not leave you wondering about the price of the ticket.

We, of course, are not talking Katie Holmes. The best thing that happened to her was that she got married to Tom Cruise, and money or no money, she should keep it that way.

Alvin and the Chipmunks

Cast: Jason Lee and voices of Justin Long, Matthew Gray Gubler, Jesse McCartney

DIRECTOR: Tim Hill

For 50 years, three singing chipmunks have had the world fascinated enough to get them two Grammy Awards, and several TV shows and motion pictures. This is the latest.

The chipmunks are cute enough, and the animation - merging them with real-life characters — quite impressive. But there is little to keep one interested for very long.

The worst that happens to the chipmunks is a record executive who wants to exploit the new singing sensations to make the maximum money out of them, and who inveigles himself into their life by pretending to be their Uncle Ian, who gets them the best food and toys.

In the other corner, offering home and unconditional love is Dave Seville (Lee), who discovered the chipmunks, wrote their first songs, and feels they are just kids who should be allowed to live normal lives. On Christmas, the first for the chipmunks and which they have been looking forward to for months, he gets them savings bonds.

Yes, yes everyone knows that Dave/Dad has the chipmunks' best interests at heart. But if it is the kids Alvin and the Chipmunks is aiming at, it lost them when the first remote-controlled helicopter gifted by Uncle Ian flew by.