Yami Gautam is a fine actress. I have seen her in 2012 Vicky Donor – in which she plays a Bengali banker, Ashima Roy, falling in love with Ayushmann Khurana’s Vikram or Vicky. He sells sperm to fertility specialist Dr Baldev Chaddha (a delightful Annu Kapoor) and mints millions. But when Ashima finds out about Vicky’s “profession” after they are married, Hell breaks loose. It is only when Ashima’s father, (Jayanta Das, a brilliant piece of performance with a very Bengali accent), steps in and gives his piece of mind to his daughter, that things begin to fall in place. Both Gautam and Khurana were superb in their debut Hindi movie, helmed by Shoojit Sircar.

But I was really disappointed to see an excellent actress like Gautam step into a film like Dhoom Dhaam, a mindless medley of mishmash. Now on Netflix, it is very, very disappointing. Dhoom Dhaam borrows without any qualms from several films and certainly one play. Vicky Donor is, of course, one. The second which I recall is Run Lola Run, and Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors is another. Has Hindi cinema run out of its ability to write an original story?

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Helmed by Rishab Seth (Cash, Ready 2 Mingle), Dhoom Dhaam is all noise and just nothing else with the two leads running throughout the 149-minute runtime. Badly edited and mounted carelessly, the movie has one eminently talented artist. And I cannot understand why she would step into a script like this – and sink.

Gautam essays Koyal Chaddha, who on her wedding night finds two men barging into her honeymoon suite, asking where Charlie is. She is bewildered, and so is her new husband, Veer Khurana (Pratik Gandhi), a veterinarian who is a vegetarian (because he cannot eat his patients!). As they give the slip and run for their lives, the predictable plotline takes us through eerily empty Mumbai streets with the road lights shining on the couple, both dressed in their wedding finery.

The great escape has one plus point: Koyal and Veer in the midst of all this fear get an opportunity to understand each other – having been married in a hurry because there was no auspicious date for a long time after two weeks, the window within which they had to take the “saath pheras”.

All these were but a big yawn for me. Cliched writing, unduly dramatic and characterisations that seemed so unreal. In the end, what was Charlie all about? I really do not know why one must sit through all those minutes to find an answer – which turned out to be silly, to say the least.

The writer is a senior film critic, columnist and author. Views expressed are personal.