The story has a lot of punch. Sadly, little of this punch comes across on screen because the debutant director's teething troubles catch up with him, matched frame by frame, with his eagerness to fill in the blanks with items and characters he thinks are necessary in a commercial blockbuster. But these additions do nothing to carry the film forward. They do more harm than good to the fun and the entertainment the film aims at.

The core group of friends, Ranjita and Apratim, socialize with appears like a group with little in the top storey of their anatomies. All of them, (including a German-Polish actress who plays a German journalist who does everything but journalism) can neither act, nor do they have an iota of screen presence. They have precious little to do other than gaffe around purposelessly and discuss the threatened love affair of Apratim and Ranjita. Sprinkling the frame with an eye-candy like Claudia Ciesla does not quite work. The same goes for an item number that suddenly springs up like a mushroom into the frame. One does know how or why this girl whose performance is as bad as her looks, has been introduced into the script. The dance number is badly choreographed, positioned, executed and even cinematographed. The other hiccup is the scene at a city discotheque called Spring Club, where the friends repair to, only to be surprised by actor Parambrato Chatterjee who arrives in his star persona. This scene too, simply does not jell with the spirit of the film and again, is badly written, directed, choreographed and picturised. It is rather amusing to watch Ranjita ogling at Parambrato as his die-hard fan because one does not know Parambrato to have attained that kind of stardom yet.

Doshta Dosh's strong point lies in the characterization of Durga Prasad. Soumitra Chatterjee's portrayal of the don who cannot become a true don because he is too weak-kneed and emotional and cannot make the difference between a toy gun and a real gun is outstanding. Montu, his Man Friday, loves to play with plastic toys and often substitutes the real gun with his toy gun leading to funny misadventures. Paul has courageously cast Chatterjee in a character that goes totally against the actor's grain. Subrat Dutta as Apratim surprises us with his sheer versatility while Padmanabha Dasgupta stands out as the rival don who cannot speak English and understands very little of it. He has also written the dialogue some of which can send you into splits. Aparajita Ghosh Das's Ranjita is just a pretty little dumb-headed doll who is both disgusted with and embarrassed by her father's profession. She suits the character to a tee and plays it well. Arin has introduced a metaphorical character (Nitya Ganguly) who crops up anywhere and everywhere in every imaginary garb but finally as a policeman. One fails to find the logic behind this character. Is it a spoof on art films? If it is, then the spoof does not come across clearly.

Basab Mullick's cinematography is good in parts but loses out in the dance scenes. Drono Acharya's musical score that was a big part of the film's high-end promotional strategy fails to live up to the promise except in a couple of numbers towards the end. The lyrics are very good though. The editing is filled with jerks and starts and one does not quite know what is happening and why. The different tracks of the narrative are not woven together seamlessly so the move from one track to another often seems out of sync.

Doshta Dosh is basically about Kolkata, its rainbow-hued people with interesting and atypical shades. It is a character-centric story revolving, on the one hand, around a mafia don who aspires to be Dawood Ibrahim's equal in this part of the world, and on the other, it has intriguing love angles between and among a very young, fun-loving, core group of friends unwittingly drawn into Durga Prasad's spidery web. It is a brazenly commercial film and has the young audience as its target though older people will also love Soumitra Chatterjee's new as mafia don Durga Prasad complete with a white-haired wig. Arin could have toyed around with the title cards at the beginning of the film. Remember Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi?

If Doshta Dosh is meant to be a spoof on filmmaking, it does not carry the message across. If it is a spoof on wannabe mafias, it is one big ball of fun, albeit, with a few hiccups, if you are willing to overlook some serious gaffes in casting, characterization and scripting.